


Cupid's Toy

by elenorlaura



Category: Smallville
Genre: F/M, Jimmy Lives!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:05:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3392819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenorlaura/pseuds/elenorlaura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chloe Sullivan-<strike>Olsen</strike>’s happily ever after got derailed before her honeymoon started and her re-bound boyfriend? Indestructible lovelorn monster from outer space. Her post-divorce, post-break-up, post-psycho stalker life is rocking a bandage dress made out of caution tape. Her orbit includes a collection of high maintenance superheros and a network of satellites she hacked. Her life is uncomplicated because it is increasingly compartmentalized. Enter Oliver Queen, inconveniently convenient walk-on candidate for a round of ‘Who’s your dream date?’ at last call. What they’ve learned about managing heartbreak and heroism could have been written on a postcard, so they are figuring it out as they go along.</p><p>Art by bkwurm1 here http://bkwurm1.livejournal.com/17409.html</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art by bkwurm1 here: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/27101/27101_600.jpg  
> 

The first time Chloe and Oliver had sex, she kicked him out. 

You have to understand that there was a thing, with zombies, otherwise it doesn’t make sense. 

When Oliver arrived on the scene of Chloe Sullivan’s latest act of reinvention, looking like he had zombie apocalypse wardrobe accessorized by a shotgun, zombie spatter, and four days of scruff for flavor, it was at the end of a long and trying extended weekend of fun-ness interuptus for Oliver. It started five days earlier in Star City with the Orchid Bay regatta. Queen Industries hosted a three-day music festival on the ocean front campus of the company headquarters. He threw himself into the party atmosphere, and four days later all he had to show for it was the beginning of a migraine and a tacky Bachelor knock-off competition going with a trio of women who were too irony impaired to realize that it was a joke that he had lost interest in almost as soon as it started.

He fled to Las Vegas for a poker tournament, got into a fistfight, and found himself going several rounds at an underground fight club. When he woke up the next day, around noon, it was to find that Tess Mercer was in the hospital being treated for an undisclosed illness. He decided not to be inconvenienced by this development, and sent a text to his long-suffering assistant to ask her to send a fruit basket. 

His pilot tracked him down a few hours later with an urgent message from Chloe Sullivan. She needed his plane. This was conveyed, by his Metropolis based pilot, without one shred of skepticism or concern about the possibilities that Oliver had other plans for his plane. It said a lot about how embedded Sullivan was that Oliver didn't find that odd, either. 

He caught up with Chloe and Emil Hamilton a few hours later while the jet was refueling. Emil filled him in on what was going on just as Metropolis’ version of Night of the Living Dead was getting out of hand. 

Oliver saw it this way: He quit his crappy night job, and barely a week had gone by and there were zombies. “Typical,” he muttered, feeling the hook grab him somewhere behind his navel before Team Chlemil was even off the ground.

Since Chloe and Emil had the antidote delivery in hand, he made his way to the city, geared up for action without a mask, prepared to defend the defenseless, rescue Lois, or hold off the zombie invasion.

Zombie Lois kicked his ass. Naturally, Clark showed up just in the nick of time to save her, leaving Oliver to herd the rest of The Daily Planet’s infected staff members to the street where they too could be cured. It wasn't going to replace herding cats as an idiom, but as a frustrating attempt to control and organize a class of uncontrollable and chaotic entities went, it really could have. 

Since the jury was out on whether the zombies were actually zombies—Emil thought they were still alive—the live action video carnage had to be dialed back to non-lethal levels while he protected the citizens of Metropolis and kept from being infected. 

Oliver was traumatized—there was crusty zombie goo on his jeans, and it smelled awful, so Chloe told him to take his clothes off and take a shower. Then she stole his clothes and threw them in the washing machine on the heavy soil cycle. 

It still really doesn't make sense, and because it didn't make sense, Oliver was happy to be kicked out—or as happy as he could be when all the metal bits on the inside of his jeans were hot from being plucked from the dryer and flung over the railing at him from the second floor of the Watchtower. He was toasty warm in clean clothing when he caught sight of himself in the dull finish on the inside of the elevator doors, and pointed at his reflection.

“You are an idiot,” he told the moron smirking back at him under some dead giveaway hair combed by fingers other than his own. 

Every muscle in his body was screaming at him about the abuse he had heaped on it since he decided that he sucked at being a hero and needed to get another hobby.

At that moment, he resolved to never mention it to anyone. When women threw your clothes at you after sex, it probably meant that the woman was not interested in talking about this new development in your friendship and recently severed working partnership of several years. He would have liked to pretend that it was a hypothesis, but he had been kicked out under similar circumstances before. 

He scrubbed at several days of stubble on his chin. It itched. He had tried growing a beard before, but there was always a point when he remembered the way sweat collected in his beard on the island, and how much he wanted the beard gone. Shaving it off had not been fun, and he kept shaving because he could, and it was something simple that he could do. For two years his life had been organized by the incredibly simple mundane tasks that had to be completed every day to keep him alive. 

He needed to shave. It was the simple, mundane, immediate thing that he could do while he figured out why Chloe’s living room looked like a steam punk influenced war room, and how Chloe and Emil ended up being the line of defense against zombies. Zombies were an all hands on deck event.

The elevator doors opened and he found himself face-to-face with Clark Kent. They stared at each other long enough that the elevator doors started to close again, and Clark’s arm shot out to block the door even as he pivoted so that he wasn't blocking the opening.

“I didn't know that you were back,” he said in a cautious tone of voice.

“I’m not,” Oliver said. “Chloe needed a plane.”

“Oh,” Clark nodded slowly. “Well . . . that’s good . . . that you were able to help,” he clarified.

Oliver exited the elevator. “Don’t worry, Clark. I’m not sticking around.”

“Oh,” he grimaced, looking up, like he could see through twenty-seven floors of aging skyscraper, which he could, if he was so inclined. “So . . .” he rubbed the back of his neck. “I never meant for this to happen,” he said. “If you change your mind, I’d like to talk.”

Oliver thought about telling him that there wasn't much to talk about after he was dismissed from service with, “Oliver isn't one of us anymore.” He refrained. In his head, he sounded like a bitter ex.

“I’ll pass,” he said evenly. If Clark didn't want him to leave, he could stop him. He didn't, and Oliver crossed the lobby, walking out into a bright, sunny day. He found a pair of sunglasses in the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

It was inevitable that his mind would wander back to Chloe. For one thing, Clark was probably walking through the doors of her war room right now. She was dressed, and he really could not imagine that she would, in a fit of honesty, announce that she had—

His brain stuttered with the improbability of it. The apartment—the last time Oliver had seen it, which was only a few weeks ago, it had been depressingly empty. His presence had been required only to pass the keys on to Chloe since Jimmy didn’t want to talk to her before he went back to rehab. Being lauded as the hero who organized the capture of Davis Bloom had snapped Jimmy’s precarious grip on sobriety, and he turned up in Oliver’s office at the conclusion of an epic bender in a confessional mood. 

It turned out that the apartment was the lone marital asset of the short and ill-fated Olsen-Sullivan marriage. When Chloe and Jimmy were engaged, they pooled their savings. On Chloe’s side of things, this included her college money and a retirement account she cashed out when she was fired by Lex. That money had gone into a down payment on a virtually uninhabitable apartment, and Jimmy’s drug habit. The bank was foreclosing because, with being mauled by a monster at his wedding reception, recuperating after major surgery, being tazered by his loving wife when he went monster hunting, then quitting his job and abusing prescription pain medicine, and nearly getting killed by the monster again because Chloe was hiding him in her basement--.

Oliver considered reminding Jimmy that he had been there, but instead, did what he always did. He reached for his checkbook to fix the mess, swooping in to pay off the mortgage. He wasn't going to let Chloe end up with nothing. He leveraged his problem solving services to get Jimmy to quit claim the deed before going off for the inpatient treatment Oliver had already offered before. 

When Chloe started calling him again, he gave his phone to Emil Hamilton and washed his hands of what happened next because he got the message loud and clear when Clark took off for his little training sabbatical in the north. 

He was staring out at the skyline when he was explaining this to Dinah, who was the audience for the man-whining observation, “You have to understand that there was a thing, with zombies—“

“Zombies? Sure, yeah, I get it. You were traumatized,” Dinah interrupted.

“What? No!” Oliver made a face. “It was pretty gross—“ he temporized, because it wasn't like there were witnesses to him dry-heaving. Merciful God, the smell! His stomach was cramping a little at the memory. 

“Was it in your hair?” she asked.

Dinah was cruel that way. Oliver had to suppress a shudder. Great. He was going to have nightmares about it now. 

He was kind of into Dinah once upon a time, when she was hot and morally questionable and Clark was pimping her out to him to distract him from restarting anything with Lois, while presenting a plausible alternative to Chloe, as Oliver’s new sidekick. 

Between this and the time Dinah tortured him with what happened to spit in wind instruments, his nascent attraction was the rare relationship that he had seen go bad before it actually began. 

“I should have just gotten drunk in an alley in Suicide Slums,” he said. “Why did I call you?”

“Good question!” Dinah fired back. “I can’t believe you would be so stupid.”

That shut him up for at least thirty seconds. He was almost certain that she meant stupid enough to call her, but maybe also stupid enough to act on an attraction to Chloe that was so repressed that he would have called it non-existent the day before.

He made a face at his reflection in the window. Repressed was a given. Non-existent? That was a stretch.

“Let’s go back to zombies, because there is some crazy shit going out over the web about an outbreak in Metropolis,” Dinah observed.

Oliver nose curled. There was pungent extra crispy zombie flesh on the muffler of his bike, and he could still smell it. The bike was a total loss. 

“Zombie crisis is resolved, for now. Emil and Chloe figured it out, whipped up an antidote, figured out a delivery system, and—“

Huh. The critical component for the antidote was Clark’s blood. That was interesting.

“And?” Dinah prodded.

He told her the rest. “It just sort of happened,” he said. “One minute I’m drinking tap water to ‘cure me’ in case I got infected by the virus, and Chloe’s looking for bite marks—“

“Eeeew!”

“Tell me about it,” he sighed, “and then . . .” his voice trailed off, sense memory returning with a vengeance. Unsatisfied with visual examination, she had run her fingers over his shoulders, down his arms, over his chest, and he had been prepared to tease her about it, but he could see her calm detachment coming undone. He had been in the middle of retelling his epic battle on Fifth Street when he realized that she was quietly freaking out.

He remembered what she said when he pointed out that she saved the day, because he could tell she needed to be reminded that the zombie crisis had been resolved. 

“I didn’t think _anyone_ was coming.”

He closed his eyes. What the hell _was_ going on that Chloe didn’t think that anyone would come if she called them? Clark had some nerve, kicking him out only to let things slide.

“And then . . .” Dinah prompted. “Cue violins, or was it more Nine Inch Nails?”

“It was Layla.” He didn't meant to say that.

Now it was her turn to go quiet. 

“Are we talking the extended version?” she asked, sounding impressed.

He closed his eyes, rubbing his face with his hand. He could still smell her on his skin. 

The part of his brain that had been shouting ‘what the hell?’ at him must have given up in disgust. 

“Ollie?”

“I don’t understand what just happened,” he said dully. 

“How did you leave it?” she asked, amused but concerned. 

They slept a little and when he woke up, she was still asleep. That was when the ‘what the hell?’ chorus started whispering in his head. Naturally, he ignored it. The second time it was slow and intense. 

They fell asleep together, but he woke up alone in a makeshift bedroom that wasn’t much more than a storage room with a bed and an end table. He made his way downstairs in a makeshift toga that made her laugh when she saw him. 

“I don’t know,” he said. 

“C’mon. Don’t make me drag it out of you.”

“It just—I’m not back,” he said. “I told her that I’d keep paying her salary and I’d help out with finances if she wanted to keep working with the rest of you.”

“Huh,” Dinah huffed. “Wow. Did you tuck that in an envelope next to the bed?” 

He frowned. “It wasn't like that. We had coffee. We were talking. The way we normally talk, about the stuff we normally talk about,” he said testily. “She wasn't mad. She got my clothes out of the drier and she gave them to me.”

He took a little editorial license on that point. 

“And you skippity-do-da’d your ass out of there,” Dinah filled in. “But, hey, since your little freak out was all about your zombie trauma—“

“It just didn't seem like—“ he stopped short of saying that it didn't seem like something Chloe would do, because that was obvious, and he wanted to get back to the part that was someone else's fault. “She said that she was afraid no one would come. What is that about?”

Dinah sighed. “I’m not on your payroll. Talk to Bart, or Emil, or—I never really understood about how things stand with Vic. If you aren't back, I’m not talking to you about it.”

“Are you serious? Just answer the fucking question. Why would Chloe think that no one would come?”

“Did anyone?” Dinah shot back. “Things have been weird. If you are back, talk to John. If you aren't, leave it alone.”

He knew she was right. 

“There is a CDC press release out . . . virus, blah, blah, blah. If exposure is suspected, bathe and drink tap water. That’s it? Ordinary tap water?”

“That’s why they needed the plane. Emil said they engineered a vaccine using Clark’s blood.”

Silence reigned as they pondered the significance of that.

“Tess Mercer was in the first wave of the infected,” Oliver noted. 

“Are you sure that Lex is dead?” she asked bluntly.

Wacky science with alien DNA was one of Lex’s favorite hobbies, so it wasn’t that odd that they were two times zones apart and wandering down the same familiar path. 

“Yep.”

For all the brevity of his response, he sounded anything but glib. 

“Do you need me there?” she asked. 

They both ignored that fact that his ‘I’m not back’ did not apply if this was more 33.1 wackiness.

“Not yet,” he said, before adding, “Sharpen a stake. If it is Lex, vampire rules apply.”

It said a lot about the general tenor of things that he wasn't joking, and Canary didn't laugh. 

 

The difference between a fresh attraction and a repressed one? Imagine that you are a superhero for a moment. Standing on the ledge of a building, poised for action, and utterly unaffected by the height. Managing to be in three-quarter profile on your good side, and behind the distorting shadows created by a hoodie, bathed and the eerie white up glow of streetlights on leather. 

No one is ever going to accuse that guy of not going for it, but that guy was Oliver Queen’s alter-ego. That guy’s very existence was a series of compromises with the circumstances that created him, shoved to one side where he could do more good than harm. 

Oliver wasn’t going for it. Pretending that it never happened was the way he and Chloe rolled. They had been up on the metaphorical ledge before. It didn't hurt that they tended to prioritize and put mission before personal issues. 

Not that Chloe knew anything about the freshness date of Oliver’s attraction. As far as she knew, it ran its course within ten hours of the initial lip-lock. She wasn’t obsessing about it. Much.

“Conditioning first,” Dinah said in her ear. “How do you feel?”

Chloe wiped her mouth and tapped the button to unmute the audio on her earpiece. “I just threw up on someone’s hydrangea,” she confessed.

“Aw! You ran so hard that you puked? I’m so proud,” she said. “And, it totally makes getting up two hours early for a virtual run worth it. Are you sitting down? You might need to put your head down, between your legs. I don’t want you passing out on me.”

Chloe was sitting on a low retaining wall, mercifully far enough from her spontaneous expectoration that she could almost pretend that it didn't happen. She popped the top of her water bottle, squeezing water into her mouth to rinse and spit. She was up to running the parkway. Seven and a half miles long, Southern Parkway stretched from Waterfront Park on Riverside Drive through the center of Metropolis University to Adams Park. The park was a twenty-acre estate with a mansion that was the original site of Belle Reve, once a sanatorium for genteel and well-to-do people who suffered from ‘afflictions of the nerves’, and now a meteor infected supermax outside the city limits.

She had made it from Watchtower to the park and a third of the way back before she threw up. 

She sucked in another mouthful of water to dispel the awful taste in her mouth and spat it out into the ivy growing behind the retaining wall. 

Southern Parkway was composed of four lanes of north and south bound traffic around a twenty foot wide bands planted with trees. Local access lanes on either side of the parkway made it a popular route for runners and bicycle commuters.

“You need to get up and start moving before you get stiff,” Dinah prodded. 

Chloe nodded. She had a bus pass hanging off a lanyard that held her ID and a debit card, tucked in under her t-shirt, and on most morning she used it before she reached the park. She was pushing past that and thought that today was the day that she made it back on her own. The run to the park was on a gradual, punishing uphill grade. Running back was all downhill. 

She got to her feet, using the low rise of the retaining wall to stretch. 

“How are you moving?” Dinah asked. 

“Good,” Chloe said. It was all relative. She was moving. That was the good part.

She took a small sip and swallowed this time, resisting the impulse to gulp. When Dinah agreed to start training her, one of her conditions was that Chloe had to demonstrate that she was committed. With unerring accuracy Dinah found the perfect activity to test her resolve. She made Chloe run. _Daily_. She started with ten minutes on the treadmill several times a day, and when she achieved that, Dinah increased it to twenty minutes. Then it was road work, with the park and back as the ultimate goal. 

Chloe hated how it literally ate time. She wasn’t crazy about how pointless it was as a form of transportation. It was completely impractical. She wanted to go back to a simpler time when feet were just there to be slipped into shoes on the 70% rack at Nordy's on payday. Gritting her teeth, she walked a little faster. 

Most of all she hated that she now knew exactly which buses drove the Southern Parkway route because every morning she was negotiating with herself about how much longer she had to do this before she could allow herself to take the bus. 

“How far do you think you can make it?” Dinah asked. 

Chloe thought about it. “Met U,” she said.

“Okay. I think you got this,” Dinah said. “I’ve got to go.”

Chloe propelled herself to a jog. Downhill. “Thanks, Di,” she said.

What she hated most about running was how her mind went blank. It never lasted long enough. Leaves were turning overhead, and she ran under the colorful canopy, feet slapping the pavement as her form deteriorated. She tried to hold onto the corrections that she needed to make, but they came effortlessly only when she surrendered to her mental landscape. 

When she ran it was harder to keep everything organized the way she needed it to be. She was a visual thinker. If she started thinking about the database, she could see it. Houses became tables, roads were the relationships. She was afraid that if she let herself wander too far down that train of thought, she’d find herself running on an unfamiliar road.

Clear your mind, she coached her brain, focusing on the stride that was going to feel right to control her speed. She wished that she could run to music, but that was worse than thinking about the database. Music evoked mood and with nothing to compete with it for her attention, she’d wander in her head, stumbling on stuff that would get churned up.

She looked for the spire of the University chapel, and kept running. Her nose was running a little and she used her sleeve with an inward ‘yuck’. She didn't have tissues in her pocket and she wasn't stopping. 

Off to her right a horn tooted. She looked over and saw the 4th Street bus pacing her. The driver opened the driver’s side window. “Looking good!” he yelled. 

Aw! She waved, smiling. This was what she loved about living in the city. The bus picked up speed, sweeping past her. Not much farther now. She had this. She totally _had_ this.

The spire came into view between trees, just starting to show some autumn color. Her phone beeped in her ear twice. She thumbed ignore and kept going. It rang again, and she shook her head. The spire was playing peekaboo with her through the trees. She had four blocks, maybe five, and then she’d be on the dormitory side of campus. 

Her phone beeped again. She could feel the muscles in her face tightening as she fought to hold on to her goal. If she answered the phone she would have to stop. She was coming up on the first of three intersections into the campus, and the light was changing in her favor as she approached it, looking left then right before plunging across five lanes of roadway. 

The residential district was behind her now. To her left the buildings were commercial. To her right, there was Southern Parkway’s run down, campus adjacent houses—mostly student rentals. Temptation blowing up on her right as the houses gave way to the entrance to a strip mall with a Metro Stop outpost. Two blocks.

Her phone beeped again. Leave a voice mail! Sheesh!

The next light didn't hold for her. The crosswalk had a count-down pedestrian signal and when it hit five, she prepared to cross Southern Parkway to keep up her momentum for the last block.

A driver attempting a left turn honked his horn at her when she moved into the intersection, and she waved. It was her light. She made it to the other side. The coffee side. The light for Central Avenue hadn't changed. One block, one block, one block, she chanted in her head, jogging in place, and then—

“Damn it!” her phone was beeping again. She gave up and jogged to the coffee shop. It totally counted she told herself as she came through the door, walking like her feet were still in jogging mode. She ordered a skinny iced caramel macchiato and swiped her card, slipping it back into the plastic sleeve hanging off her lanyard when her voice mail chime went off. 

Since she was still hot and sweaty, she collected her order and went outside. The tables were occupied, so she went around the corner and sat on the curb in the section marked for handicapped van parking.

From here she had a view of the block she meant to complete as her taste buds processed the hit of caffeine and caramel. 

Tomorrow, she promised herself. 

When her breathing was back to normal, she queued up her voice mail. She already knew that it was Clark.

“Where are you? Pick up when I call again.”

She made a face, shaking her head. She decided to take the instruction at face value, and was almost half-way through her macchiato when he called again.

“Hey, Clark,” she said.

“I’ve been calling you all morning,” he began. “I need you to track some stuff down for me. I left it on your desk.”

“O-kay,” she chirped. Maybe there was something to the idea that exercise improved mood.

“I also need you to tell Oliver something when you talk to him,” he added.

She grimaced. “Try Emil.”

“Are you trying to say that you don’t talk to Oliver?” he sounded skeptical. “Doesn't he pay your salary?”

There were times when she wondered if Clark knew about what happened with Oliver the last time she saw him. 

“Maybe, you ignore him, too,” he said in what was probably meant to be a humorous aside, only it came off snide.

“Hanging up,” she caroled, refusing to let his pissy mood ruin her morning.

She was hauling herself to her feet when Clark called back.

She tapped her earpiece. “Ready for round two?”

“I was out of line,” he said. “It’s just frustrating. I call, and you ignore me, and—where are you?”

“Campus,” she said, walking across the parking lot. There was a 4th street bus stop a block and a half away. It wasn't the closest, but there was service to the downtown business district every twelve minutes and it put her a block from her office.

“ . . . Why?” Clark’s tone was puzzled now.

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not. I can come get you,” he offered.

She looked at her caramel macchiato and blanched. It really was a tall, cold, cup full of pure heaven, but she had already thrown up and Clark’s pick-up service was likely to cause her to hurl again.

“Pass,” she said. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

“What are you doing? I have to cover for you with Lois, you know.”

“Pot, meet Kettle.” She relented, “I run every morning, Clark. This morning, I made it to the park, and campus is where I stopped.”

“You? You _ran_ to the park, and back to campus?”

“Yep!” At least he was good for seeing how amazing that was. “So, tell her the truth.”

He snorted. “Oh, for—Chloe! That _sounds_ like a lie. Lois would never believe that, and then she’d want to know why, and— _Why?_ It doesn’t make sense. You don’t need to do whatever it is that you are doing.”

“Really?” the sarcasm was thick.

“Tell me that you don’t hate it,” Clark challenged. “You don’t have anything to prove to anyone.”

There was no part of that statement that she registered as true. “I kind of _do_ ,” she countered. 

Clark sighed, “Okay. Do you know where Oliver is?”

She reached the corner, and waited for the light. “I can figure it out,” she said. “Why?”

“Someone blew up one of his factories this morning, and I think its got Toyman written all over it.”

“Clark! Way to bury the lead,” she scoffed, reversing course. “I’m at the Metro Stop on Central Avenue.”

“Pick you up?” he guessed, sounding surprised about her about face.

“Around back,” she directed. 

He beat her there and was pacing when she rounded the corner. She gave her caramel macchiato a sad farewell and pitched it into the dumpster Clark had used for cover.

The look he was giving her was priceless. “Are you sure it is worth it?”

She wasn't one of those people who could run ten miles and have nothing to show but a bouncy ponytail and a dewy glow. "Jerk-face," she reached for him. "C'mon, Clark. You are in a hurry," she reminded him.

He whooshed away, and returned with a towel and a package of wet wipes.

She laughed. “Let’s go.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art by bkwurm1 here http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/26689/26689_600.jpg  
> 

The second time Chloe and Oliver had sex was after Winslow Schott tried to blow Oliver up. 

The funny thing was, Winslow had a legitimate, if completely psychotic, grudge against Oliver for framing his villainous alter-ego, Toyman, with Lex Luthor’s murder. There was a whole tit-for-tat thing—Lex started it by teaming up with Toyman to blow Oliver up when Oliver bought a controlling interest in Luthor Corp. 

If Oliver had been designing a presentation to explain the significance of this as a trigger, he might have gone with a Lord of the Rings inspired montage with Luthor Corp as the Precious and Lex Luthor standing in for another famous, folically challenged character—the point being, that he _knew_ that Lex was going to lose his mind. In fact, he was _counting_ on Lex losing his mind and making a mistake. 

Blowing up the Luthor Corp board of directors to get at Oliver was the overkill that, however briefly, made Oliver decide that using Toyman’s bomb to murder Lex and frame Toyman, was justice delivered with retrained symmetry. 

If anyone believed that, Tess Mercer had a very broken Geo-Thermal plant to sell.

Arguably, it was Oliver’s fault for seeing an opportunity to induce psychotic rage. That was the Gollum argument that went with Lex screaming, “My precious!”

Oliver had spun excellent reasons for blowing up Lex with a bomb that Lex commissioned Toyman to make, and framing Toyman for the deed. 

He ducked behind saving Clark from Lex, and that was certainly part of it, because there was no doubt about what Lex wanted to do after he figured it all out, and confronted Clark. Since Clark hadn’t been interested in being a team player, Oliver had worked out exactly how motivated Lex was to do Clark in while he was standing in the ruins of the ice fortress that Lex destroyed, looking down at Clark’s red jacket, buried in ice. 

What followed with Lana was exhibit A in the case demonstrating that Lex’s goals had only been tempered by the desire to make Clark suffer, as much as possible. 

That was the self-righteous justification he unloaded on Chloe—twice a victim of Lex’s illegal experiments—thirty seconds after he blackmailed her to keep quiet.

What a hero that guy was! Doing all the dirty work to spare his friends the duty of putting down the unsalvageable villain and save the world, and not even resenting it, too much, when they were less than appreciative. 

Tess had booked the Ace of Clubs for a stockholder event and demanded his presence. They were locked into an epic struggle. After he returned to California, Oliver decided that he had to cut his ties to Luthor Corp—which was a lot more complicated than it looked. Between the broken Luthor Corp Geo-Thermal plant and Tess’ ambitious green energy research and development, Luthor Corp was swimming in debt. The merger with Queen Industries was keeping Luthor Corp from going under. 

It was like having the drowning victim you swam out to rescue use you as a flotation device. You either had to knock them out, and drag them back to shore, or sink with them until they let go so you could escape.

They were still in the reorganization period of the merger with two separate boards. The new Luthor Corp board was in Tess’s pocket. His QI board was bitter over his refusal to give them time for due diligence before acquiring controlling interest in Luthor Corp.

There had never been a more perfect use for the foil he had perfected—Oliver Queen, feckless, playboy billionaire was on the loose. Queue up a hot dance mix and let the party never end.

Star City was, in some respects, a company town. The reaction to his vicissitudes was tempered. There was a restrained panic in the air over QI’s falling stock. The senior management team knew that this was mostly a perception problem, and that QI was not only fundamentally sound, but poised with product in development that would keep them strong for years to come. If it weren’t for the dead weight of Luthor Corp, the blocks of preferred stock held by the Robert and Laura Queen Foundation, and Oliver’s personal allotment of preferred stock, they would be tip-toing into hostile take-over territory themselves. 

Tess was ready to tear her hair out when she introduced him to the stockholders. Going off the barely contained fury and disgust that emanated from her, Oliver was a little concerned that he might actually provoke her to kill him with her bare hands. Instead, Winslow beat her to the punch, blackmailing him into reading a catalog of his failings while he stood on a land mine with dozens of bystanders in the blast radius.

He was back in Star City the next day, unharmed. The first thirty seconds of his speech to the Luthor Corp shareholders had gone viral. A boorish business news fan-boy was insisting that it was all a part of a brilliant strategy to free Queen Industries from the Luthor Corp merger, but he was mocked by the serious business journalists for his far-fetched explanation of Oliver’s behavior.

The bitch of it was, that the words on the monitor, the words that Toyman forced out of him, were true. Winslow didn’t know the half of it. He was a liar, a cheat, a thief, and a murderer. What he was doing right now, to his family’s company, wasn’t a slick, clever ploy. It was unethical. The casualties in an undeclared war with Luthor Corp weren’t a mythic evil empire, or a manipulative, bitter ex-lover. He was robbing investors, some of whom were able to roll with the losses. Their institutional investors represented pension funds, insurance risk pools, foundations supporting charities, and college endowments. The losers were faceless, voiceless multitudes that depended on them to make good decisions and follow the rules. 

He wanted to put this on Clark, but last night, after Clark saved the day, he realized that Clark had moved past that moment in the barn when he wrote Oliver off. 

Oliver couldn’t get away from Metropolis fast enough. 

He ran his fingertips over a gleaming row of titanium quarrels mounted on a custom-made rack. He picked up the crossbow—small, lightweight, refined, it represented hundreds of years of lethal ballistic weapons technology. Banned by the Roman Catholic Church in the 12th century, the crossbow was the only weapon effective against armored, mounted knights. It was the weapon of bandits, outlaws, and rebels. 

He raised the weapon to sight on a wall that was bare. The same wall that was once covered with the clues he had uncovered to track Lex’s movements. The freshly painted blue-gray blankness could not erase the memory of how long he had planned and plotted to do what he had eventually done. 

His hand remained steady. 

I murdered a man strapped to a gurney, he reminded himself. There was no immediate threat. No lives were saved. There were other means to contain him. 

And, he had places to be, didn’t he? He returned the crossbow to its niche. It was time to go be _that_ guy.

 

With the time difference, a flight to California was as close to time travel as it was possible to achieve without alien technology. Chloe Sullivan arrived in Star City at almost exactly the same time she left Metropolis. She felt naked without her laptop, but she had learned her lesson about carrying her laptop into enemy territory last year when it was stolen. 

She had no plan. Between her gate and the line at the rental car counter, she decided that she couldn’t be in Star City without seeing her mother, so she plugged the address of the care facility into an app on her phone while she rode the van to the lot to pick up her rental. It was a two-hour drive. It wasn’t her first visit. Oliver took the time to drive her the first time she visited, otherwise she would have thought she was lost when she reached the turn for Pleasant Landing. It looked like a Potemkin village version of a farm, with a winding driveway, a creek and a covered bridge, a stocked artificial lake, and a lot of ducks. There were hillsides covered in the silvery purple of lavender. 

Pleasant Landing was a working farm. They had a gift shop and an online catalog for soap and candles. Some of the residents participated in the running of the farm. It was also a long term care facility with capacity that ranged from assisted living to critical care. The skepticism Chloe felt as she toured the facility for the first time was allayed by a growing optimism. This was not a place to warehouse the hopeless or incurable. 

She arrived in time for lunch, and after she checked in at the desk a resident-volunteer escorted her to a dining room connected to a long colonnade. The doors were left open, letting in the sunshine and fresh air into a large room with pale, buttery yellow walls, and tables of varying sizes spaced to accommodate wheelchairs. The visitor badge pinned on her blouse had her mother’s picture and name on it. Before she finished serving herself at the buffet, several staff members introduced themselves with friendly smiles.

Over time, her hopes that her mother would improve had diminished. It was harder, and harder to visit. In some ways, Pleasant Landing made it easy for her. They had a website and Chloe could log in and read the nursing notes that were posted on her mother’s account. She learned to manage and moderate her expectations.

She picked at her lunch until Maureen O’Connor arrived. Chloe knew her from phone calls and emails. She was the nurse manager in charge of her mother’s care. “Moira has occupational therapy in the morning, and she usually sleeps after that, but she’s awake now.”

Chloe knew enough about the strange nomenclature of long-term care to recognize that occupational therapy wasn’t a signifier. OT for her mother was about preserving muscle mass and tone to prevent atrophy. 

“No more problems with the foot drop?” she asked, holding the strap of her shoulder bag with two hands.

Margaret smiled, “That resolved nicely,” she said. “You haven’t been here since she was moved to the new unit.”

Chloe found her mother outside. She was wearing khaki crop pants and a t-shirt, and her shoulder length hair was combed back behind a headband. She was sitting up, on a wicker love seat with one hand on the arm of the chair and the other on a sleeping dog with long white hair. And it seemed, for a moment, that she saw her. Really, saw her, because her hand rose from the arm of the chair in a vague gesture.

Margaret took her arm in a firm grip when Chloe burst into tears, leading her away from the open door. 

She handed Chloe a tissue. “It’s okay. Take a minute,” she said. “There has definitely been some improvement, and we’ve always assumed that Moira’s awareness is unimpaired.”

“She knows that I’m here?”

“We’ve told her that she has a visitor,” Margaret said. “Your Dad visits, and your uncle Sam. Your cousin Lois has been here.”

When Jimmy was in the hospital, in Star City, Lois came with him. Chloe knew that she had visited her mother, too. 

“I-I just need a moment,” Chloe said.

“I would need more than a moment to see my mother like this,” Margaret’s frankness was bracing. 

Chloe blew her nose, waiting to get her breathing under control.

Her head was crowded with questions that could not be answered. 

“I’m going to be right here, and as unobtrusive as we try to be, your mother does not have an unobserved moment, so there will always be someone near if she needs assistance,” Margaret said while Chloe used another tissue. 

The walk out to where her mother was waiting was excruciating. Leaning down to press her cheek against her mother’s, Chloe searched her unfocused blue eyes for recognition. “Hi, Mom,” she whispered.

The hand on the armrest lifted again, and Chloe took it, sinking down on her knees. The dog lifted its head, regarding her with sleepy interest, before resting its chin on Moira’s leg, wiggling closer with a sigh as her mother’s hand carefully stroked its spine. 

“I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you sooner.” Chloe said.

The last time she had been here was also when Jimmy had been in the hospital. Her mother had been recovering from pneumonia, and Chloe left thinking that it might be the last time she would see her. The absence of any deep feeling about that had not really bothered her until now as she felt the clumsy-careful stroke of her mother’s index finger on her palm. 

Margaret was right. They were never really alone. After fifteen or twenty minutes passed, a young woman came out with a bottle of water for Moira, and another for Chloe. With matter of fact ease, she brought the straw to Moira’s lips and waited patiently for her to sip while keeping up a steady stream of cheerful conversation about the dog while Chloe got up off the ground and sat beside her mother with the little dog between them. 

“That’s Daisy. She has her favorites,” she said, rooting in her pocket for a dog treat. Daisy lifted her head hopefully, craning her neck, but waiting politely for the treat to come to her. “Likes a cuddle. It’s usually the boys that are cuddly, but Moria and Daisy enjoy each other’s company.”

“Do you have a lot of therapy dogs?” Chloe found herself asking.

“We’ve got four resident dogs and a cat, and twice a month we have a puppy day,” she rested her fingers on Moira’s throat to check her swallow. “Puppy day is huge around here.”

“There,” she nodded. “She’s looking for your hand,” she said, handing Chloe the bottle she was using for her mother. She scooped up the dog so Chloe could move closer. Set on the ground, Daisy vigorously shook, white fur flying, and trotted off to explore. 

Later, a groundskeeper dragged an umbrella over to provide shade and an older man in a wheelchair rolled over to introduce himself. Margaret came out to ask if they needed anything, and Chloe made herself get up to go to the bathroom. When she came out, Daisy was back with another one of the therapy dogs on his hind legs with his paws on her mother’s knee, sniffing her fingers. 

She burst out laughing when Daisy jumped up to take the spot next to her mother, glaring at her defiantly as if to say, ‘this is my seat, thank you very much’. 

“You are having a good visit, then?” Margaret asked, gesturing to her to walk away with her. “She’s getting tired,” she said quietly. “A nap before dinner, and then an early night, I think. Why don’t you stay with us while we get your mother settled, and if you don’t have plans for the evening, you are welcome to stay. There is a fold out in Moira’s room.”

For a moment, it was beyond tempting, but she had to fly out tomorrow, and checking her watch, she saw that it was late in the afternoon. If she was going to track down Oliver, she needed to get to work on that. 

“I have to go,” she said. “I need to make a call, and then—“

“Through the day room, and then right. Moira’s suite is the third on the left,” she said, studying Chloe’s face. “The visit has done you a world of good, hasn’t it?”

Chloe nodded. “Thank you.”

She walked in to watch from the windows as Margaret and an orderly got her mother up, keeping her between them. Her movements were a little stiff, and mechanical, and she needed them to steady her, but she made her way across the lawn. Chloe took a deep breath and dug her phone out of her purse. Her plan, such as it was, was to call Oliver’s longtime assistant, Mary Northrop.

She got through to her quickly, and explained that she was in town and hoped to surprise Oliver.

“The easiest way to find Mr. Queen these days is to follow the gossip columns. All I can tell you is that he is in town. He should be keeping a low profile after the day we’ve had, but my guess is that he won’t.” She rattled off a list of nightspots.

Chloe thanked her and considered her options. She had a t-shirt, a change of underwear, and a toothbrush rolled up in the biggest purse she owned. If she was going to find Oliver in a club, she was going to have to get in, and her travel outfit wasn’t going to make that work.

After her mother was settled in bed, Chloe sat with her until she finally dropped off, and then made herself leave. She was on the highway headed to Star City when she realized that she had only the vaguest idea of how to organize a head-to-toe evening look in a city she was unfamiliar with. Normally, she would call Lois, but then she would have to explain why she was in Star City.

She called Lana instead, hoping that she had the time difference right. The call went to voice mail, and she was tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, mentally paging through other possibilities when Lana called back. 

She sounded out of breath. “Hey, stranger!”

“Hi, Lana.”

“I got your message, and I think I can help,” she said. “Hair, make-up, clothes, shoes, accessories, right?”

“Yes,” Chloe made a face at the expense. It looked like she was breaking out the ‘for emergencies only’ credit card on this trip.

“Okay, I’m on it. Give me an hour,” she said. “Is this for a date? Or, is it field work?”

“Definitely field work,” Chloe told her. “I need to make it past the door, and not disappear in the crowd.”

“That will make it fun,” Lana said. “I’ll call you back, or text you.”

Chloe was pulling through a drive through for coffee when Lana sent a text with an address, followed by a phone call. “I called a stylist I used to use when I was married to Lex, and she’s got it covered. I sent the address to you.”

“You are a life saver. Thank you!” 

“No problem. Everything okay?”

“Mn-hmm,” Chloe hummed. A driver behind her honked over her slow roll out to the exit. “Crap,” she muttered, jamming the coffee cup into the holder. “I’m on the road,” she said apologetically.

“Got it. Call me when you can so we can catch up, and don’t do anything that I wouldn't do,” she teased.

“Er—“ it was on the tip of her tongue to say something that would be a lot more Lana than her. She shook her head. If she were channeling Lana, she could probably get what she needed to get done with a cool t-shirt and the right shade of lipstick. “I’m not sure what that means—“ okay, that sounded bad.

Lana laughed.

“You brought Jason Teague back from Paris,” Chloe reminded her.

“He brought himself,” she corrected, choosing not to take offence, “But, now I’m intrigued.”

Chloe eased out into a break in rush hour traffic. 

“Is this about Oliver’s melt down?”

“How did you—“

“It’s on the internet,” Lana told her. “Be careful, Chloe,” she cautioned. 

“I always am,” Chloe replied. “Anyway, it’s Oliver.”

“I defer to your undoubtedly superior knowledge of the man,” Lana said with all of her reservations about the reliability of Oliver Queen on board.

They made small talk for a few more minutes before Lana said that she had to go. Chloe’s GPS got her to her destination twenty minutes later. She got out of her rental wondering if she had taken a wrong turn. She was in what appeared to be a rundown meat-packing district. She was nearly sideswiped by a kid on a skateboard. 

“Look up!” someone shouted overhead.

She looked up to see a woman hanging out of a second story window. “Chloe?”

“Yeah?”

“Stay there, I’m coming down to get you,” she called back. 

A few minutes later a lank six foot tall amazon in baggy cargo pants and a poured on t-shirt with an amazing collection of tattoos bolted out a side door. “I’m Bitsy,” she introduced herself. “C’mon up. We got the glam 911 hook-up. You are what, a six?” she said, ushering Chloe through the door.

“More like a 10,” Chloe corrected. 

She got a skeptical arching eyebrow. “That’s cute,” she said, leading Chloe up a flight of stairs. “The toughest place to get into without knowing anyone is going to be Cloisters, so that’s going to be our goal. I know the DJ, so we’ve got a shot.”

The second floor of the warehouse was mostly open space with a sheet strung up, and Chloe had her doubts about the operation. Until they went behind the curtain. Her eyes widened at the racks of clothing and accessories. “Okay,” she nodded. Something in here had to fit.

Two hours later she was ushered past a line of people and into Cloisters, dressed in an eye catching red dress that left one shoulder bare. Her heart sank a little at how dark and crowded it was. The building was originally a girl’s school. There was an open atrium four stories up with two balconies overlooking a dance floor and stage area. 

Pasting on a smile, Chloe made herself move. She needed to get a better idea about the layout of the club. 

She was on the third floor when she overhead a waiter saying that Oliver Queen had arrived and was downstairs. Something magical happened in the next minute. The third floor _emptied_. 

A bartender wiping down the bar caught her eye. “Can I get you anything, or are you,” he nodded to the stairs.

Chloe’s feet were already killing her. Her dress fit, but her shoes were pinching in the wrong places and slipping in others. “What do you recommend?”

“I’ve got just the thing,” he said, depositing a napkin on the bar. “In town for business or fun?” he asked, filling a glass with ice.

“How do you know I’m from out of town?”

He smiled back at her. “No tan,” he shrugged.

She conceded the point. “Visiting friends,” she said as he shook up a mix bottle filled with something red. “Cranberry juice?”

He nodded, “Good guess,” he complimented. “We’re kind of a one-horse town when it comes to our local celebrities. Oliver Queen was getting kicked all over the Internet today, so we have to show him some love,” he explained, adding a generous amount of scotch to her drink with the cranberry juice.

She withdrew a credit card from her new clutch, handing it over. “That’s got to be weird,” she said.

“Totally weird! He’s little orphan Ollie, and then tragically presumed dead Ollie, and then miracle shipwreck survivor Ollie—“

There was a roar of applause from below. “Weird, but good to be the Prince of the city, I guess.”

Chloe took a sip, making an appreciative sound. “This is good,” she said, registering how unrealistic it was to expect to get anywhere near Oliver.

Her stomach growled. “I’m kind of starving,” she confided.

He took it seriously. “Okay. Can’t have that. There are plenty of good restaurants around, and the boardwalk is two blocks away.”

He was still giving her the lowdown on nearby restaurants when the crowd started filtering back.

Chloe finished her drink, shamelessly eavesdropping. She got the impression that Oliver made an exit out the back. Giving the bartender a little wave, she started making her way back down the stairs. If she had stayed with her mother . . . she sighed, feeling the heel of her new shoe slip. She paused on the landing to tug the sling-back strap back into place. 

Her choices were limited. Find food—that was becoming a priority. Find a place to stay for the night. She ended up waiting at the valet stand for her rental, and decided that she would try the one place that she had avoided so far, and get dinner. She drove to Oliver’s address. He had a condo that was part of a hotel complex on the bay. 

She walked to the front desk after surrendering her rental to yet another valet.

A uniformed clerk asked if she had a reservation. “No. I would like to leave a message for Oliver Queen,” she said.

A guarded expression blanketed the smiling face. “Do you have a pen and paper?”

Both items were produced, and she wrote: I’m in the lobby restaurant having dinner, then passed the note back to the clerk. 

“Your name m’am?”

“Chloe Sullivan,” she said, and that was that. Whatever she thought she would say to him was a distant memory, and she wasn't prepared to run seven miles to find it in her running headspace. She made her way to the restaurant, waited to be seated, and stared at a menu with too many choices. She was tired, and she felt vaguely guilty. When the server came back a second time, she ordered coffee and an appetizer. 

Oliver was a grown man, and one of the most capable people she knew. He didn’t owe her the explanation or reassurance she wanted. After what happened the last time they were in the same room together, she could not think that he wanted to see her. Mutual avoidance spoke for itself. She had been scanning Star City’s police blotter and news since he had gone back, looking for any clue that Green Arrow was active, and as good as Oliver was a covering his tracks, she knew that he couldn’t hide from her.

If he really was done, she had to know. 

John was covering for her tonight, so she checked her email to see if he needed anything. 

One of the nurses had taken pictures of her with her mother on her phone, and after she finished eating, she opened the camera roll to look at them. 

“Ms. Sullivan?” A grey haired man in a suit that screamed ‘security’ was standing in front of her table. “If you’ll come with me, Mr. Queen is on his way back to his residence, and he asked that you wait for him there.”

Chloe’s eyebrows rose. Yep. That was grade-A stalker bait. “He has my number. If Ollie wants me to meet him somewhere, I’m going to need to hear that from him.”

She tried to catch the server’s eye to ask for the check.

“We’ll take care of the meal if you’d like to leave,” Mr. Hotel Security offered in a classy, but unmistakable invitation to leave.

“Okay,” Chloe slipped her phone back into her purse feeling ridiculous. This was the universe sending her a message. She rose and got a neutral ‘after you’ gesture. He stayed with her at the valet stand. It was late. She checked her watch, wondering if it was worth checking with the airlines to see if she could leave early, or maybe even checking in with Clark to get home faster.

That was when she heard, “Leaving so soon?”

She looked over her shoulder to see Oliver, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled above the wrist, wearing flip flops of all things, strolling toward her from the hotel lobby like a man without a care in the world. 

“How long have you been here?” he asked, eyeing the security guy before giving her an appreciative look. “You look _amazing_ ,” he said when he reached her. “Do you have somewhere to be, or do you have time to have a drink, or . . .” his voice trailed off with that charming Oliver Queen suggestion of openness to anything. 

He was _fine_. Yesterday, on video, he looked shaken. Right now, other than avoiding her eyes, he appeared to be fine. 

“The valet is bringing my car,” she said. 

“That’s no problem, is it?” he asked the guy who had escorted her out. “You will take care of that?”

“Happy to, Mr. Queen,” the security guy said. 

Oliver tilted his head to the lobby, and Chloe shrugged, following.

He walked beside her once they were back in the lobby, putting a hand out to direct her past a bank of elevators to a discreet door behind the concierge desk. “When did you get in?” 

“This morning,” she said as he pulled a key card out of his pocket to call an elevator. “Where are we going?”

“My place,” he gestured upward. 

The doors slid open and she went in, leaning against the sidewall. 

He was doing a good job of mauling his lower lip, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I just got in,” he said abruptly. “I didn’t think to check my messages. Did they give you a hard time?”

“I’m practically an expert at being thrown out of places, Ollie. They were nice about it. I had something to eat before the discreet hook was applied.”

His eyes met hers, briefly before sliding away. Before the awkwardness could become even more excruciating, the elevator chimed softly and came to a smooth stop in a marble tiled foyer. He swiped his keycard against a pad on the wall and nudged the door with his foot. 

She came to a stop just inside the door. Other than scale, it was an accurate copy of his loft in Metropolis. He saw it register and one corner of his mouth turned up. “Shut up,” he muttered.

“It’s so . . . early, modern . . . you,” she deadpanned. 

His head bobbed. “I like that. I may have to use it,” he went over to a bar that was very like the one that he had in Metropolis. He gestured to the interior wall behind him, and then to the twenty foot window with the breathtaking view of the bay. “No clock, and there’s a pool.”

She chuckled. “Of course there is. It is California. It’s probably standard issue.”

He grabbed a couple of glasses, a bottle of wine, and a corkscrew. “Now that you mention it,” he gestured to the door. 

She didn’t see anything to push or pull, and looked for a motion sensor, before pointing at the door and saying, “Open.”

She nearly jumped out of her slingbacks at the whoosh of air that accompanied the door sliding back.

“Remote,” he said, shaking his head, amused by her reaction.

Chloe walked out on a terrace that was widest at the threshold, tapering back toward the wall of windows. A staircase down to a pool was to her right. It occurred to her that it was a large space to be unfurnished, but maybe he just acquired the place for the view, like one of those homes with the fancy kitchen that no one ever cooked in, but went with McMansions like processed cheese and secret sauce.

“This is nice,” she said, thinking of the view.

“Yeah,” he gestured around. “I don’t have any furniture out here.” He set the glasses down on the wall at the top of the stairs and got to work on the cork before pouring. Chloe went to the other side of the staircase, where the outer wall of the terrace gave the view of the bay. Lights from the Star City Bridge played across the rippling surface of the water. She turned, leaning back against the wall to look up at twenty feet of glass, the softly lit interior that was familiar, and jarringly strange to find here. 

He brought her glass to her, keeping his cupped in his hand as he braced his elbows on the wall. His teeth went back to gnawing on his lip. He was side eyeing her again, not quite meeting her gaze. There were a couple of times that it seemed like he was about to say something. They ended up speaking at the same time.

“Ollie, I want—“

“Are you here—“

“—to thank you.”

“—because you think I’m in trouble?”

She tilted her head to one side. There was no point lying about it. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Before you say that I shouldn't have, and I say that it is what I do, could we table that for a second?”

He nodded, his expression wary. 

“I went to visit my mom today.”

The tension around his eyes eased as interest kindled. “How did it go?”

“It was great.” She set her glass on the wall and opened her purse to get her phone. “I have pictures,” she hesitated. 

“Yeah, I want to see them,” he responded to the unspoken question, and she unlocked her phone to go to her camera roll, letting him take the phone. 

“The last time I was there she was on the urgent care ward, and it was depressing, but this was—“ she had to pause to get past the sudden tightness in her throat. “It was more than I hoped for,” she said, looking at the picture on her phone. “Can you see? She’s holding my hand.”

“Yeah?” the sympathetic interest in his voice was soothing. 

“I know that it doesn’t sound like much, but—“

He nudged her with his arm. “I’d give anything to hold my mom’s hand. It’s huge.”

“I haven’t seen her since Jimmy was in the hospital,” she said. “They said there were modest gains, and I know it is more impactful because it has been ten months, but it was wonderful. They take such good care of her. Thank you for making it possible.”

He smiled a little. “You’re welcome,” he gestured with the phone. “Where did the dog come from?”

“They have therapy pets on her unit. That’s Daisy. She likes to sit with Mom,” Chloe’s eyes filled and she reached for the glass, turning her head away to discreetly brush away the tears.

When she turned back, she found him watching her. “Tell me what was different,” he invited. 

Chloe leaned against the wall again, trying to sort her impressions into something coherent. “In some ways, very little has changed. Her affect,” Chloe gestured vaguely to her face, “is poor. She doesn't talk. She has spontaneous utterances, mostly in her sleep. She needs constant care and supervision.” The devastating dimensions of her mother’s condition were still present, persistent, and resistant to treatment. “Today, I felt like she was a person and not just a patient,” she said, looking over at him to see if he understood.

“That’s good,” he said. “She looks great, Chloe,” he returned her phone.

She flipped back through the pictures. “I have to come out here more,” she said, mostly to herself.

He was looking at her as if he couldn't quite reconcile her appearance with her purpose in being there. Chloe put away her phone and pulled a mocking pose. “I know. It was a stupid idea,” she admitted. “I wasn't sure how to get in touch with you, so this was what I came up with to get past the rope line at The Grotto.”

Enlightenment, he nodded. “I’ll bet that worked.”

“And, there were hundreds of people there,” she shook her head.

He looked pointedly at her purse. “That little rectangular thing. It’s a phone. You can use it to call me,” he mimed.

“When you gave your phone to Emil, I understood that you were telling me to stop calling you,” she countered.

His expression became oddly arrested. “That was the Green Arrow phone,” he said, feeling silly saying it, and annoyed with himself for wondering why she didn’t call him. She was right. The unvarnished message he meant to convey was: _don’t bother_. He didn’t think that she’d actually apply it so comprehensively. 

“To be perfectly clear, your name on my caller ID is something I miss, and I know that I gave you an entirely different impression—I’m sorry.”

“Okay . . .” she checked her reflection in the glass window, determined not to dwell on how that felt at the time. “It was kind of fun, dressing up. Staking out a nightclub, flirting with the bartender,” she smiled, pointing at the dress. “This is a six. It fits, and I look fantastic in it.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. He toasted her. “You do. You’re gorgeous,” 

“Thank you,” she admired her shoes. “Nice flip flops,” she said, wondering if this was who they were now. People who knew each other once, reduced to idle, awkward conversation. 

“These old things,” he joked. 

They didn’t have to be reduced to idle, awkward conversation when there was purposefully awkward conversation to be had. Her smile dimmed a little. “Ollie . . . your life is really weird. How did you get away with slipping the leash?”

He grimaced. “This week is a little more in the fishbowl than most,” he conceded. “It’s my fault.”

“I thought I killed the video feed,” she murmured, wondering if he would believe her.

Before she could connect that to Winslow—or blame herself for not limiting the damage—he headed her off. “I’m doing something a little—possibly more than a little—questionable. Mergers aren’t like a shotgun wedding. It’s more like an arranged marriage with an engagement period. There is a formal period of reorganization that takes place. That’s where we are with Luthor Corp. Mergers fail. For lots of reasons, but both parties have to agree that they are failing, unless there is some legitimate reason discovered—like one of the parties misrepresenting their assets and liabilities.”

Chloe frowned. “You want out of the Luthor Corp merger,” she said.

He wasn't surprised that she worked it out so quickly. “They didn't misrepresent anything. I didn't take the time to let my board look hard enough—largely because I thought it would kill the deal. I find myself in the buyer’s remorse category with a merger partner that is drowning in debt and expanding in green energy with technology that could end up being incredibly valuable, or could end up being a bust.”

“Does Tess know what you are doing?” she asked. 

He grimaced. “I’m gambling that she’s letting our history get in the way, and that the board loses confidence in the merger.”

“So, it’s all a smoke screen,” she said, testing the idea.

He nodded, watching her turning the idea over. 

“Check your server. I asked Victor for the footage. I leaked the video.” 

She didn’t expect that. It put a different perspective on things.

“Hey,” he turned to her, looking down at her bare shoulder. She was wearing a chandelier earring that was playing peekaboo with the length of her hair. He reached up and flicked it with his finger, smiling. His fingertips stroked her chin with just enough pressure to get her to turn her head. “It’s my headache. Don’t worry about it,” he said, leaning in slow enough to give her time to bail out if she wanted to.

Her gaze shifted to his mouth and her lips parted. That was a face that he had seen in his dreams for a couple of weeks. She had the most ridiculously long eyelashes, a face that could read almost effortlessly. He remembered her coming to him when Bart disappeared. It was one of the last times that he misread her. He saw someone that he took no more notice of than required to by courtesy, and in less than a minute, she set him straight. 

“Hi,” he said, lightly tracing the outline of her lower lip with his thumb. 

The anticipation was heady stuff. Her hand came up to his shoulder and he cupped the back of her head as their lips met. He felt the soft rush of her breath leaving her. 

Chloe’s hand climbed to his neck. She knew that she was a good kisser. She practically turned studying kissing into a science through high school, but she had never kissed anyone who was as receptive or intuitive as Oliver. A playful flick of her tongue got a small break as he smiled. His hand gripped her hip, pulling her away from the wall enough to slip his hand behind her, supporting her as her weight shifted into him. Her thumb followed his jaw as the kiss deepened, following her hand to the back of his neck. 

“How long are you here?” he asked, kissing her neck.

“I’m going back in the morning,” she said, tilting her head to give him better access, shivering at the sensation. 

“Where are you staying?” he asked. 

“I—oh,” his lips found the spot where her skin was pulled tight over ligament, “that’s nice,” she breathed, almost forgetting the question. 

“I thought I’d get a room at an airport hotel,” she said.

His arms tightened. “Stay with me,” he offered. His lips found her pulse point, sucking lightly and her other hand found his waist, working upward over a shirt that had probably started the day crisply starched, but was now softened with the warmth of his skin. 

“Uh-huh,” she smiled at how it came out, blindly turning her head to kiss any part of him in reach. Since he drew back at the same time, the tip of her tongue traced the line of something too well defined to be a part of a lip, and—

Her eyes flew open, as her head snapped back. She kissed his laughing mouth, giggling herself until they broke apart. “I didn't—“

“Oh, yes! You _did_ ,” he told her, brushing his nose against hers. “That was _sexy_ ,” he teased. “For just a second there, your tongue was in my nose—“

She took his lower lip between hers to make him stop, surprising a little moan out of him that made her feel smug. 

“—I like that,” he murmured, kissing the tip of her nose. His fingers traced the margin of skin where the shoulder strap of her dress swept across her back, and he ducked his head to kiss her bare shoulder. “I like this, too,” he murmured, manipulating the fabric against her skin, finding the nearly invisible zipper, and lingering there like he was marking the spot.

“Let’s go in,” he said, like the idea just popped into his head. 

Chloe’s fingers were playing with the hair at the back of his head. His temple was close to her lips, and she kissed him there. A month ago she would have said that she wasn't ready for a relationship, and she wasn't interested in casual sex. She smiled at the irreverent thought that followed: then she got some, and her views on casual sex expanded. 

She expected him to be fairly adept at closing the deal at this stage. He lifted his head, tilting it as he assessed her smiling face. 

“Okay,” she went up on her toes to kiss him, and stepped back to get her purse and her drink. He ran his fingers through his hair, retrieving his drink, and the bottle left on the wall on the other side of the staircase, juggling them to use the remote he had dropped into his pocket. 

Chloe’s unconcerned ascent surprised him. He kissed her to distract her from dissecting his agenda, but he didn't really expect it to work, and then he got distracted by his own diversion.

Inside the great room, Chloe paused. “Do you need a moment to,” her lips quirked in a smart ass smirk that she was trying to suppress, “freshen up? Maybe, take a moment to think about it?” the smart ass smirk was winning. “You could duck into the bathroom, and shave your legs?”

“You are hilarious,” he said, throwing his arm around her neck. 

“I don’t want you to do anything that you are going to regret in the morning, Oliver,” she said. “You are a nice man, and sometimes nice men find themselves in situations where the expectations are greater than they intended when they started rubbing themselves against all of this,” she said with an airy self-referencing wave of her hand.

He rolled his eyes, smiling at how much she was enjoying herself at his expense. 

“I don’t want to take advantage of your moment of weakness,” she tilted her head back to look up at him, batting her ridiculously long eyelashes.

His hands were full, so he just tightened his arm around her neck, “That’s very cute.”

Her arms slipped around his waist. “That’s camouflage. You get that don’t you?”

He almost missed the note of something serious in her voice when she grabbed his ass and gave it a firm squeeze. “Oops! I’d say that my hand slipped, but I've been dying to do that,” she skipped past him up several stairs where she paused to take off her shoes, letting them dangle from her fingers by the strap as she backed up the stairs. 

When he reached the step below her she shrugged. “Tell me that I’m going in the right direction?”

“Up the stairs. Master bedroom to the left. Your pick of guest rooms to the right,” he said, giving her an out if she wanted to take it. 

She continued backing, keeping a step between them. “So many choices, and we haven’t even explored the possibilities of bathtubs, showers, or the kitchen counter,” she leered at him playfully. “I don’t want to take you out of your comfort zone, Ollie.”

“Wow, you are really enjoying this, aren't you?” he marveled. 

At the top of the stairs she paused, appearing to think about it. She nodded. “I have to self-censor, a lot,” she confided before looking left, and then right, and then—

“My left,” he hinted.

She gestured with her right hand, following it with an inspired bit of slapstick, as if she was being towed into the room.

He followed her, cracking up when she stomped her foot. “You get turn down service!”

She set her wine glass down on the table by the bed to seize a square of chocolate. Wrapped in gold foil, it bore the chocolatier’s embossed logo on a band wrapped around the center of the square. “You . . . cake eater!”

She unwrapped the chocolate and popped it in her mouth. “It’s really good chocolate, too,” she mumbled around it, dropping her shoes as he slipped out of his flip flops, untucking his shirt. She came to him and brushed his hands away from his shirt front, working on the buttons.

“I usually just pull it over my head,” he confided. “I had years of training at a boy’s school where going without having to re-tie a tie was considered an art form.”

She held her hands up. “You aren't wearing a tie, but I want to see this.”

He brushed down his cuffed sleeves, gave the back of his shirt a firm upward tug, tucked his shoulders in, and pulled, finishing with a showy snap of his wrists that made his t-shirt flutter to the ground. 

Chloe shook her head. “There are no words,” she murmured. Without her usual three inch heels, the top of her head was a couple of inches below his chin. She spread her hands over his chest, giggling when he dropped the shirt. Her clever hands and pointy tongue were giving him goosebumps. 

“I get to do this part,” she said when her hand reached his belt.

“Jesus,” he ran his fingers through her hair. “I don’t even get felt up a little first?”

She snickered. “Good one,” she ran her hand over him. “The word that comes to mind is . . . turgid.”

His fingers tightened on her hair, tugging her head back. He couldn't remember the last time he wanted to kiss someone this much, but her mouth was too far away and her eyes were dancing with a heady mix of fun and desire. She unfastened his belt and seemed to get confused about how his pants closed at the waist. 

“Stupid bespoke suiting,” he muttered, helping out after she got the first button, to get the inside button two inches away, and then the second button that kept the placket smooth. 

“There is a zipper, too?” she was incredulous. “Do your clothes have to work this hard to stay on you?”

Her hair was slipping out of his fingers as she leaned in to kiss his chest, working her way down. 

“Hey,” he protested. “Where are you going?”

“You know where I’m going,” she said, when she reached his navel. 

The hell of it was, that he did, and there wasn't much more that he could do other than not fall down in the tangle of trousers and boxers. His hand shot out to grab the edge of the dresser when she took him in her mouth. 

Oh, Jimmy, you poor, stupid, stupid bastard, he thought as her hands gripped his hips, guiding him a little to lean against the dresser. The mirror banged against the wall, and she looked up to make sure that it was alright. 

Yeah, he remembered this part. His brain skipping to the parts of her that he wanted to touch, compromising with what he could reach, he played with the fingers of one her hands, the muscles in his abdomen contracting as he met her hand halfway, biting the fleshy part of her hand under her thumb. He felt her flinch when his fingers got tangled in her hair and he stroked her cheek with his thumb to let her know that he felt it. She leaned into the caress, head bobbing, and covered her hand on his chest.

When he got close, he made a feeble attempt to warn her. “Chloe . . . I’m—“

She pinched his hip and when he let go of the dresser to grab her hand, laced her fingers through his like she knew that doing this without taking advantage of the connection they had was wrong.

 

They ended up on the floor at the foot of the bed. Chloe had so admired the beautiful, wide planked floor, too, before it was demonstrating it’s lack of give. Oliver solved the problem by massaging her knees while he hugged her to his side. His skin was hot against her cheek. He kissed the top of her head. 

Ollie was a snuggler. Who knew? She traced the edge of his nipple with her fingernail, smiling as it grew taut, ready to test the theory that Oliver had sensitive, perky nipples. 

He started twisting a lock of her hair around his finger.

She tipped her head back to look up at him. His eyes were closed, and he had a little smile on his face. It was kind of cute. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“Hmm?” his eyelids lifted briefly. He gave a spare shake of his head. “Not thinking,” he said, the dimple near his mouth deepening. “You melted my brain.”

He released the curl he was playing with, running his index finger down the edge of her ear, making her earring shift. “You need to take these off. I thought I yanked it out of your ear.”

“Good idea,” she said, sitting up to take her earrings off, and then deciding to get rid of her pantyhose, too, because that was always awkward and the rest of her clothes were out in her rental. She was in no hurry to leave, but when she did, she wanted to leave without looking like her hosiery had been shredded. 

The circulation was back, but her knees were still a little sore. She placed her earrings and pantyhose on the dresser.

“Hold still,” Oliver said, following her to get to his feet, so he could help her up. He brushed something off her hip. “Dust?” he shrugged, shaking his head. “I think I need to get you out of this dress,” his hands circled her waist. “Closet? You’ll want to hang this up, right?”

She smiled. “Wow. You are really naked.”

“I noticed that,” he nudged her a little to get her moving. “You are a very thorough ravisher of unsuspecting young men.”

She looked up at him, lips pursed. “Not bad, but you have to keep it on this side of creepy,” she told him.

“Ah,” he nodded. “Good to know,” he stepped away from her to refill his drink and waggled the bottle for her.

“I left my glass by the bed,” she told him. His closet had two doors. She opened it and peeked inside, and then slumped against the closed door. “Oh my God, I hate you.”

He topped off her glass, snapping his fingers. “I didn’t really give you the tour, did I?”

His closet was at least eight feet deep and wide. There was a spotless stacked, washer/dryer pair in the far corner and floor to ceiling built in closet cabinetry. The first empty hanger she spotted was a stainless steel curve of metal for trousers below a fancy hanger system for ties and belts. 

“Chloe?” he stuck his head in, snagging her wrist. “You are literally pea green with closet envy, aren't you?”

“I share a closet with Lois, which is to say—“

“The sharing concept is one-sided? No, you don’t have to quantify that,” he rejoined, pulling her out of his closet. He had pulled on his boxer shorts. “Okay. This is my room—“

She snorted. 

He started to hand her the other chocolate from the bed and gave her a reproachful look. 

“Gimme.”

He unwrapped it for her, and she took it. “Continue?”

She nodded.

“This is my room,” he started again. “Bed.”

Her eyebrows rose. 

He opened the drawer of the bedside table, and she slapped her hand over her mouth. The drawer was filled with what looked like a year’s supply of chocolates like the one she had in her mouth. 

“The stash,” he stage whispered, nudging the drawer shut. He pointed to the a curtained wall. “Terrace. Rumor has it that the hotel has snipers posted on the rooftop to take out paparazzi.”

She picked up her glass and took a cautious sip of wine, and then savored the combination of melting chocolate and wine. He pointed to the door on the other side of the dresser. “Bathroom. The bidet was designed based on the same bidet that Marie Antoinette used,” he said facetiously.

She toasted him. “Reproduction cake-eater bath fixture,” she nodded solemnly. 

She took another sip. “The chocolate and this,” she held up her glass. “So good,” she went to the bathroom door to peek in. There really was a bidet, and a double vanity, and a shower, and a huge bathtub. She curled her toes into a runner than felt like it was made of fluffy baby ducks. 

“Pure evil,” she announced. 

He followed her in. “The bathtub?”

She moved in a little farther. “I don’t really need the tour,” she said, setting her glass on the marble topped vanity. 

“Maybe I want you to feel at home,” he posited, catching her eye in the mirror. There was something in her expression that made his eyes shift to her back. She had a sexy little perfectly round, flat, mole about an inch away from her spine. 

“There’s a little hook at the top,” she hinted, comically arch.

“Yeah, I know,” he unfastened it. The nylon tab zipper at the top was tiny. When the zipper was halfway down her back, she turned, resting against the vanity with a little grin, shrugging to let the shoulder strap droop. 

“I’ve got this,” he said, unthreading her arm from the strap. He expected a strapless bra, but there was shelf bra built into the dress, so it was just her. Soft, winter pale skin—she didn’t get out enough—and nipples that were just a little darker than he remembered. He scooped her up. She wasn’t expecting it, so she had to throw her arms around his neck, her breath leaving her in a rush. 

She pouted at him. “What? No fair! I didn’t know about the counter in the bathroom when I made my list.”

“I want to roll around with you on a bed,” he countered, carrying her back to the bedroom, finding the mattress with his knee before he deposited her there. His hand framed the outside of one breast, and she bit her lip, watching him with half-closed eyes as he touched her like she was delicate and treasured, unwittingly living up to her envious teenage imaginings about how her infinitely cherished friend Lana Lang was treated by any one of her adoring boyfriends. 

Oliver tilted his head, and she found a reassuring glint of humor in his eyes. “I think I’m going to start right,” his index finger tapped her left nipple, “here,” he said.

“Pfft,” she blew out a breath. “Take your t-time,” she managed, deciding that this was a great time to maneuver a hand behind her back to deal with the pointy end of the metal tab on her zipper digging into her back. 

He helped, or it seemed like he was helping when he palmed her butt with a squeeze and lift maneuver while his tongue did amazing things to her nipple. “Oh, I bet you can do that thing where you—mmm—t-tie a knot in the stem,” a viscous tug on the zipper got it going, “of a cherry,” she huffed. 

She shuddered when he nodded without breaking contact with her nipple. 

“Right,” she breathed, feeling her dress ride up. If only she hadn't got distracted by his stupid custom closet and fancy pant hangers. She couldn't watch. Her nipple emerged from between his lips so slowly that it was kind of hypnotic. 

“You have to do that again,” she said. “I think I missed part with the zipper—oh,” she sighed. “That’s nice,” she squeezed his upper arm. He had great arms. The pressure of one of his legs between hers was just evil. It was there, but not quite there. She wrapped her leg around his and shifted. “Mmmm, there,” she sighed.

He took the hint and the hand squeezing her butt moved down, slipping under her skirt, skimming, skimming. He was going for her butt again. She shifted the tiniest bit away, and his hand made it to her hip. Just a little bit further, she thought as his attention shifted to her neglected nipple. 

“That’s so—“

“Do something about your dress,” he muttered. It might have been ‘got to do something about your dress’. He sounded gratifyingly impatient about getting her naked.

The dress was in the way, and if it got pushed down and up anymore, it was probably going to require bandage scissors to remove. 

She rolled her hips up, pushing down on her dress on one side. He got the hint and pushed down on the other, trailing kisses away from her still slightly less aching nipple. She pouted. “Just stop . . . focus . . . you have to pull.”

“This is working,” he insisted.

She was pretty sure that there was another inch or two unzipped, so maybe not working as well as he imagined. 

His head snapped back. “What the hell?” Under her dress, his hand on her left hip stopped. “What do you have on under this?”

“A chastity belt,” she huffed while he sat up. 

Chloe quickly dealt with the last two inches of her zipper, and then shimmied out of her dress and underwear. “Ta da. That’s my version of the thing you did with your shirt,” she said, waving the dress like a flag. Naturally her beige underwear chose that moment to part company with her dress, falling between them.

“Oh my God,” Oliver held up her panties. “It _is_ magic. You had all of this under that little dress?”

She tried to grab them and he just straddled her, Holding them out of reach. “What _is_ this?”

“Panties.”

“Try again,” he scoffed.

“Fine. Breifs,” she flipped him off.

He was pulling on them to test the elasticity. “We’re going get to that,” he leered at her. “I have to ask—“

“No, you don’t.”

“Why?”

She frowned. “You are kind of a bully,” she said. He probably thought that he was adorable.

“Duh,” he fired back, shifting a little as his eyes focused on her breasts. “You have great tits,” he said, waving her underwear.

She gave up. “ _Fine_! I’m a no poochy tummy after dinner, no panty line, no string up her butt kind of girl,” she said in a rush, covering her breasts with her hands. 

He frowned at her for taking away his eye candy. 

“I might have to jump a fence,” she added. 

“Fair point,” _that_ logic, he grasped. He tossed her underwear over his shoulder, raising both eyebrows at her continued coverage of her breast. 

“Me and my great tits are feeling neglected,” she said a snotty tone of voice.

“Yeah,” he leaned down. “is that so?” he got in her face until they were nose to nose. 

“What are you going to do about it?” 

He swung one leg over her. “Keep them warmed up for me,” his lips brushed hers. “I've got to make sure that your super-hero panties haven’t cut off your circulation.”

Could your face get bruised from excessive smiling, Chloe wondered, rolling on to her side when he nibbled on her collar bone. She started playing with her own nipples and he just made an approving noise, kissing around her fingers until she accidentally poked him in the cheek with one of her fingernails. He caught her hand and bit her finger tip lightly. 

The giggly part of the evening was banished by his head between her thighs and an orgasm that left her feeling unmoored, and grateful for the solid weight of his body covering her when he came back to her, having left her long enough to deal with a condom. She welcomed him back, one arm around his neck, her other hand resting on his hip in case he needed her to help. 

“Let me know if you need some help with where things go,” she offered.

He took her by surprise with a kiss that obliterated any notion of playful or friendly. They had done this before, so she knew what to expect, and that he wouldn't hurt her. She needed this, too. There was a little pinch-y discomfort that she ignored when he groaned something profane. 

She found herself responding without thinking, to the timbre of his voice, the sound, sprinkled with words that meshed with her sounds and words. He took her outside of herself and then yanked her back not a second too soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art here http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/27324/27324_600.jpg  
> 

“Your race to the bottom strategy is blowing up on you,” Chloe announced. She was sitting on the end of the bed, wearing his shirt, checking her phone for messages. 

“So fast?” Oliver complained. He scooted down the bed to look at the tiny, tiny screen over her shoulder, before burying a yawn in the back of her neck. He thought he caught the gist of her observation in a headline that read, ‘M’trop DA hails Queen’s heroism’. 

“I liked me more when I was choking on my silver spoon,” he muttered. “Come back to bed.”

“I have a flight at 8:50, and I have to return a rental car.”

His arms encircled her from behind. “Huh,” he pressed a kiss to her temple. “It should go without saying that I can get you home, if you feel like staying a couple of days. You could spend some time with your mother,” when she tipped her head sideways to give him a look that questioned whether he was using her mother as a bonus feature, he nodded and mouthed, ‘oh, yeah’, and then grinned. “That’s me, offering you a deal that you can’t refuse. I’m kind of ruthless.”

“We have that in common,” Chloe murmured. The soft focus of the previous night was exactly the way Chloe wanted to keep things, for now. 

She sent a text to Dinah to tell her that she would not be running this morning. 

Oliver’s fingers unfastened the button at the top of the shirt. “What do you think?”

“Tempted,” she admitted.

“Yeah?” he studied her face in the dim light coming from the bathroom door Chloe had left ajar. 

“I need a little time to process,” she admitted. “Maybe, go shopping? I’ve missed a lot of Mother’s days. I could do that, and visit Mom tomorrow.”

“We’ll look at you, making progress on that work/life balance thing,” he teased. 

“That’s a thing now?” She looked nonplussed. “It’s not a thing. You made it up,” she scoffed.

“It’s a thing,” he insisted, plucking her phone out of her hands when it started vibrating. He thumbed the switch at the top to turn it off. 

“Focus,” he scolded. “I’m naked here. Ignoring the naked man to text is worse than texting during dinner. It doesn’t appear on text etiquette lists, but it should.”

“There is an exception for when you are texting the people that expect you to be somewhere else, so you can take advantage of the naked man,” Chloe countered.

He returned her phone so promptly that she preened a little at his unconditional surrender, even as she fell backward with his help.

He hovered for a moment before kissing her. Since she had been up long enough to brush her teeth, it evened things out, and her grip on her phone started to ease when he moved over on top of her. 

“Hold that thought,” he murmured, getting up to go to the bathroom.

Chloe used the time to send a mass text to her Watchtower list, and a more detailed email to Lois and Clark to tell them she was visiting her mother and would be back in a few days. She put her phone on airplane mode as Oliver returned. 

The phone and his shirt ended up on the floor. 

 

If this was normal day, he would have cheerfully blown off work, Oliver thought. It turned out that Chloe really did want to go shopping, and he had an early meeting. 

The District Attorney in Metropolis called a press conference to confirm a Daily Planet report that Oliver Queen was reading from a hacked feed to the teleprompter, and that far from imploding during the shareholder event, he had heroically maintained his composure, complying with the bomber’s demands in order to save the lives of the people in the ballroom. The bomber, who was responsible for the deaths of the Luthor Corp board members, was in custody and facing indictment on new domestic terrorism charges, in addition to the murder charges filed in absentia. 

Since Metropolis was two hours ahead of Star City, Oliver had stepped off the elevator from the garage to his floor in the building that housed the corporate headquarters to employees who stopped what they were doing, emerging from offices and cubicles, to give him a standing ovation. 

He was a hero. 

Out spun by Tess Mercer, he pasted on his best beauty contestant smile. 

It was a singularly peculiar experience, and not only because he felt a degree of queasiness in having his actions, in this context, characterized as heroic. When he first started his solo career as a masked crime fighter, he was feeling a little lost. The trajectory of his life had been established before he formed an opinion on it, and the expectations was that he would one day lead the enterprise that his grandfather founded, and his father expanded. What he felt about that was complicated. His father’s older sister had abandoned a law practice and a career she built around advocating for migrant farm workers in order to lead Queen Industries and protect his interests. 

He knew that he owed it to his aunt to take an active role in the company so she could be relieved of the burden of a job she never wanted. He was proud of what his family had accomplished. His parents had set aside money and stock to create a foundation in order to direct and use the abundance they enjoyed to invest in the community and create opportunity for less fortunate people. The profitable existence of Queen Industries fed the foundation, keeping their legacy alive. 

Before he was shipwrecked, he could barely admit that he was ambivalent about his future, or that he resented being drafted by birth. Even to a relatively self-absorbed teenager, it sounded ridiculous to bemoan the burden of having so much handed to him. Two years of solitude and struggle to survive had not magically transformed him. Tess used to talk about it like he had been through a crucible, and he didn’t know enough about her to understand that she was projecting what she needed to believe about the hardships she had endured. 

He found her expectations unbearable, so he slipped back into the comfortable role of privilege and entitlement that he indulged before the island, and went looking for people who would understand his need to keep the survival skills he had acquired and continue developing those skills to mastery. That was his art. That was his way to organize himself around meaningful engagement with a world that was jarringly loud and bewilderingly complex compared to the simplicity of the island. 

His involvement with the Priory of Sion was, in retrospect, an almost frantic attempt to return to the island. He spent two-thirds of his time pretending to be exactly what everyone in the least meaningful part of his life expected him to be, hiding in plain sight, while he was consumed with training. Betraying her with another woman was one of the most pragmatic, cold-blooded things he had ever done. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she had chosen to turn a blind eye to his cheating—it would have confirmed to him that she wasn’t as blind to who he really was, deep down.

He parted company with the Priory of Sion when they ran out of useful things to teach him. 

He had skills that did not translate to anything useful or good. He started off with street crime—muggings, assaults, and robberies—the kind of crimes that the police were called to deal with after the crime occurred. The victims rarely got closure. 

Being in the right place at the right time, required observation and stealth, skills that honed by practice. The target rich environment for this kind of crime was not the wealthy Orchid Bay district or the up and coming Market Square district. It was in parts of Star City that he had no direct knowledge of in his privileged existence, and that bothered him almost as much as he enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment that came from knowing that his presence kept someone’s life from becoming harder than it was when they got up that morning.

His flashier campaign of big heists, converted into acts of altruism, started later. Looking back on it, he knew that it was because he was bored, and the challenge of keeping his alter ego’s identity hidden made the rest of his life more interesting. Still, it was a lonely existence, and it stayed that way until he saw a street kid grab a free meal and disappear. 

That was when things started changing for him; an occupation suitable for a peculiar skill set began to gain focus as a call that responded to something greater than his need to test the idea that he could do something good.

Oliver was fifteen minutes into a meeting with legal, risk management, staff from communications representing media relations, social media, and the board when he realized a couple of things. 

Through the meeting, it was not hard to follow the ebullient mood. The market was responding to the news. QI stock prices were recovering. From the surreptitious grins that he observed, he was almost ready to believe that he could announce that he murdered Lex Luthor and there wasn’t a man or woman in the room who would hesitate to volunteer to be on the ‘hide the body’ team.

The success or failure of the business did not belong to him alone any more than Queen Industries belonged to him alone, but his performance—and the perception of his performance—had a disproportionate impact. This meant that when he was spending the majority of his time looking for his next hit of adrenaline and meaningless fun, he was robbing the people who worked so hard for their success. 

The other thing that he noticed was more subtle. There was more give and take at the table this morning. Only a fraction of his behavior had been explained away. Maybe it was just that the rising stock prices put everyone in a good mood, and maybe it was the idea that he had done something brave that goaded a work group that was deferential, risk-adverse, and cautious into pressing to assign more people and allocate funding to the merger transition team. It wasn’t just about capitalizing on momentum. Collectively, they were demanding to be equipped to do the right thing.

After the meeting, he stopped by his assistant’s desk. Mary Northup was nearing retirement. She started with his father, stayed on through Aunt Charlotte’s run as CEO, and after Charlotte retired, she hung in there with him. She was the epitome of professionalism; otherwise, he would have had a hard time getting past the fact that she remembered babysitting for him. 

“I need to get a picture printed and framed before tomorrow,” he said.

She tilted her head. “Send the picture to me. I’m networked to a printer that will produce a photo quality print on picture stock,” she volunteered. “I can get a frame when I go out for lunch.” She titled her head. “Did Ms. Sullivan find you?”

“She did,” Oliver said. He was texting Chloe to ask her email her pictures to him. “I’m going to Metropolis in a few days, so after lunch? I want to start clearing my desk.”

After lunch, he cleared a backlog of paperwork that his assistant had ready for him, and started working on his Metropolis office staffing situation. He hated playing defense; second guessing every decision he made was a by-product of his unresolved issues with the very bad decisions he had made from the moment Tess provided him with the proof that Lionel had murdered his parents and culminating with his decision to go behind Clark’s back to capture and kill Davis Bloom. 

The simple explanation for his overly elaborate plan to kill the merger was that he had avoided making more bad decisions by committing to a course that limited the number of decisions that he had to make, and avoiding constructive criticism by refusing to share his plans. 

He made his way home not ready to talk about what happened, but ruefully aware that his behavior, and his explanations of his behavior, over the last few months was a lot like Chloe’s plan to get in touch with him. Overly elaborate. Deliberately circuitous. An artful near miss. He wondered why she hadn’t called him on it when he came through the door of his condo and the hair on the back of his neck prickled in warning. 

The convenience of having a residence on a hotel property was the services the hotel provided. Housekeeping and ground keeping was part of the package. This morning, when he was getting ready for work, he called the concierge desk to request coffee service. The hotel had four restaurants, and the concierge level service package provided 24/7 room service. They sorted and arranged his mail by date and size of envelope, kept his refrigerator and a basket of snacks in the kitchen filled, dusted his exercise equipment, and placed beautifully wrapped chocolates on his pillows. 

Just outside the foyer, against the wall, was a table under a mirror. It was the only piece of furniture in the condo that looked like hotel furniture, and it was there to accommodate the concierge who directed guest services. It was where Oliver’s mail was stacked until he bothered to look at it, and where the hotel services folio itemizing the services charged to him was kept. He started to put the gift bag Mary had thrown together for picture he had framed for Chloe’s mother on the table when he stopped, puzzled by what he was seeing.

The mail was scattered over the surface, and the leather folder was on the floor. 

That was a first. The housekeeping staff could have taught a class on how to clean a room without appearing to have moved anything. He picked up the folio and set it on the table with the bag. He didn’t see anything else out of place, so he shrugged it off and shuffled through the mail, finding the usual allotment of invitations, thank you notes, and bills, and junk mail. 

He carried the mail with him into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator to get a beer. Guest services had re-stocked his refrigerator, replacing the bottle of wine they had polished off last night with one of similar vintage. There was a paper wrapped wheel of brie, red grapes in a plastic bag, and pears, still in the protective webbing they were packaged in to prevent bruising. 

He turned the oven on to heat the bread left on the counter in a sleeve, and sorted his mail into an open later pile on the counter while he discarded the junk mail. 

He called Chloe’s number. The call rolled to voice mail. He waited through the greeting. “I’m home. Call me about dinner,” he said. Deciding to hold off on the bread until he knew what she wanted to do for dinner, he ignored the chime from the oven. Jogging up the stairs, he went down the hall to his room. There were shopping bags on the dresser along with Chloe’s phone. 

There were only so many places in a 2,700 square foot condo that she could be, he reminded himself.

He found her a few minutes later, lying on a towel by the pool in a bikini. He squatted next to her. “That can’t be comfortable.”

She squinted at him. “I ran for forty minutes in brand new trainers that felt like concrete blocks strapped to my unsuspecting feet. That was uncomfortable. This is . . .” her nose wrinkled, “boring? How do people do this?”

He sipped his beer, smiling at the challenge actively not doing anything presented for her. 

When he didn’t say anything, she shaded her eyes with her hand. “Speechless? Are you trying to find a tactful way to tell me that pilots flying overhead have complained about the glare coming off of me?”

He chuckled. “I think we can upgrade you to a glow. You are a little pink,” he held out his hand. “What do you want to do for dinner?”

“Nothing fancy,” she said, accepting his help. She tried to bring the towel with her, and tripped on it, stepping into the shade near the smooth white wall separating the upper and lower terrace, briefly confirming that his guess about how sunburned she was.

“There is stuff to snack on here,” he offered her his beer and she took a sip, following him up the stairs. “Or we could go out,” he rolled his eyes at that, because it was the obvious alternative. 

She paused inside the sliding glass doors, blinking to let her eyes adjust to the light, before following him into the kitchen. He was standing in front of the open refrigerator door. Chloe reached past him to grab the bag of grapes. She pulled out a cluster to run under the faucet. Realizing that she would need a plate, he abandoned his vigil at the refrigerator to get a plate the cabinet opposite the refrigerator, and she passed his beer back to him, pulling another cluster of grapes out to rinse after she plated the first bunch.

She rinsed the loose grapes at the bottom of the bag in her hand, popping one in her mouth before holding the handful out to him.

“Hungry?”

She shook her head, shrugging. “Not really. I had the best fish taco from a street vendor on the boardwalk on the way back from running,” she ate another grape, shutting off the water. From the state of her plastered back hair, she had been in the pool. 

“You know what we should do?”

She held up a grape and fed it to him when he ducked his head. “You need a shower,” he pointed out, “and moisturizer.”

“For my sunburn,” she nodded. “Good thinking,” she wound her arms around his neck, going up on her toes to kiss him.

They went up to his room, and while he was changing out of his work clothes, Chloe got in the shower, rinsing the dried chlorinated water out of her hair before shampooing and conditioning. She was almost ready to come out when he opened the shower door and she moved to share the spray. They messed around in the shower for a while. 

Sensing that she was not entirely comfortable with the idea of having sex in a confined space full of unforgiving surfaces where a fall could easily turn into an injury, he turned the shower off. Toweling himself off, he grabbed a bottle of moisturizer.

“We better do this now, while your skin is still damp.” She must have been on her stomach before he came home, because her back was a much brighter pink. She flinched at the coldness of the lotion when he started working it into her back. Hugging her against his chest, he worked his palms over her abdomen and thighs.

“That’s good,” she said, sounding a little desperate. “Do you—I want you,” she twisted in his embrace for an urgent, breathless kiss. 

“Bed,” he muttered. “Too slippery,” she made an impatient sound. “Don’t want to hurt you,” he muttered, wondering if it was possible to feel drunk on anticipation. They made it to the bed and a moment later, he was inside her, muscles in his shoulder bunching as he waited for her to give him some sign that she was ready for him to move. 

Her brow furrowed. Her lower lip protruded. Her animated face formed a crossly scowling expression within seconds. 

“Too slow?” he guessed. 

Her expression shifted by degrees to disgruntled. “Slow hasn’t happened yet,” she told him, shifting and wrapping her legs around him. Her teeth latched onto her lower lip and released with an almost silent sigh as her back arched. 

“Slow,” her eyes opened, alight with curiosity and affection. “Slow sounds interesting.”

He told himself that the tenderness he felt was because he liked her so much. He was grateful that she got on a plane to find him, even if she wasn’t sure that she would be welcome, and she had no idea what she could say or do for him, and even less idea of how potent just being present was. 

 

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place without either of them noticing it. They ordered in and ate in bed. Chloe found herself explaining why she was training with Dinah. A part of it was about proving that she was not a liability. She spent weeks on the run with Davis living inside the uneasy tension of his expectation that they would be together in every possible way, forever. He clung with fanatic devotion to an unnervingly single-minded infatuation. He had no interest in anything that did not demand her attention, or an expression of her support, and loyalty. 

There was no training that would ever equip either of them for a match-up with a creature like Doomsday, but he understood what she was saying. She didn’t want to feel that helpless again. 

He told her a little about what had happened the day that everything came to a head. It wasn’t much. He had already recruited Dinah and Bart for what Dinah referred to as Team Kill the Monster when Clark summoned them to the farm. Dinah and Bart didn’t know then that he had murdered Lex, but in the end, it didn’t matter. They agreed with him that trying to save Davis was a luxury Doomsday’s intended victim could not afford, and they accepted the fact that Clark simply could not bring himself to kill. 

That was when Victor and John crashed the party. Vic passed out a set of earpieces that Oliver recognized as the prototype of a Queen Industries product that he had only seen drawings of, scheduled for testing the following year. It was based on a new wireless protocol that extended the range and used a frequency-shifting algorithm to frustrate intercept. 

After the earpieces were passed out, their mission coordinator went active. No voice distorter was equal to the task of disguising their Watchtower. 

Chloe knew parts of the story. Clark had confronted her, twice. When Lois went missing after they succeeded in containing Doomsday, and after Chloe recovered the Legion ring when Lois returned. 

“What’s that like?” Oliver asked. “Knowing that there was a future you who came back to prevent something from happening?”

“Unnerving with a side of creepy,” she said. “I don’t know if Clark and I are ever going to come back from that.” She tilted her head. “He accused me of being willing to sacrifice Lois. At first, he was just convinced that it was a consequence of changing things, but after she came back with the ring and I had it in my possession, he decided that I had to have known all along where Lois was.”

Oliver leaned back against the padded headboard, frowning.

“I’d never sacrifice Lois,” Chloe said suddenly. 

His expression cleared. “I know that.” He started to say something else, and then stopped, shaking his head. “You could make yourself crazy trying to figure out what happened that you averted.”

“If it was me,” she threw in. 

Oliver leaned forward as if he was about to share a secret. “It was you. No one knows each of us that well. It was a complicated operation, and you had the timing, the placement of assets, the disposal site, and the rally points choreographed perfectly.”

She titled her head back. “Then there is that. Assume that you are correct. I’m supposed to be that.”

“What? You think that you aren’t?” he baited her. “I’ve seen your super hero panties. A woman, who dresses for the possibility of having to go over a fence, is not someone to be messed with.”

“You jerk!” she threw a fortune cookie at him.

He caught it, of course. “I like the camo effect of beige, but I’m thinking you’ve got to pair it with something bold,” he ducked his head, and the second fortune cookie missile bounced off the crown of his head. “Too bad you can’t fly, because, you’d look so cute in one of those sparkly ice skater costumes, flashing your flesh toned super hero panties,” he teased, his hand sliding up her thigh.

 

The next morning, Chloe headed off to return to Pleasant Landing to spend another day with her mother with the understanding that she would fly back to Metropolis with him the next morning. Late in the afternoon, she called to tell him that she wanted to stay the night with her mother. He called Bart and left a message inviting him to stay and have dinner.

It was just a guess, but Bart’s calling card was displacement. He wasn’t surprised when he returned that evening to find Bart camped out on his couch with a bottle of Scotch appropriated from Oliver’s liquor cabinet, several six packs of beer, and four pizza boxes. 

“I try to drop by, but you are usually busy,” he shrugged. “Slow night?”

“I’m leaving town for a couple of days,” Oliver said, unknotting his tie. “Do we need to order more food?”

Most of the clutter on the table disappeared, and Bart whooshed back in with a fresh stack of pizza and more beer. “I could go for some World of Warcraft,” he announced.

“So 2007. I’ve got an early release version of Call of Duty,” Oliver told him. He would have liked to change clothes, but Bart had the controllers out and opened a beer for him. He started to hand it to Oliver, and then paused. “Do you need a clean glass and a cocktail napkin?” he asked with snide deference.

Oliver took the beer. Bart moved over on the couch. “Cop a squat and prepare to be annihilated,” Bart said as he used the remote to navigate to the game system. Oliver removed his suit coat, draping it over the arm of the couch and rolled up his sleeves. His stomach growled when Bart flipped the lid on the first box. His taste in booze was atrocious, but when it came to pizza, Bart was a gourmand. 

“Uh-uh,” he gestured to the pizza. “Food, first.”

Bart cracked a smile, deftly using a paper plate as a scoop to serve up a New York style slice. Eating at what was a leisurely pace for Bart, Oliver was finishing the first slice when Bart opened the second box and Oliver was ready for another slice. 

Bart tossed him a handful of napkins. “You are going to need a bib,” he predicted. 

“Hit me,” Oliver ordered, mopping up before starting his second slice. 

Before Victor and AC came along, this was their thing. 

“Tell me this isn’t some kind of bullshit recruiting trip for a West coast team,” Bart said after he started the game.

Oliver shook his head. “No, it’s nothing like that. I promise. I need to clear the air about what happened last year.”

“Yeah? I’ve got some things that I want to say to you, too” Bart said. He shrugged. “You can go first.”

It ended up being the harder conversation than Oliver imagined it would be. 

The logical place to start was with how he learned about Lionel Luthor’s involvement in his parents’ murder, but it felt like he was using it as an excuse. Bart knew what he had done. He probably had a good idea of what his motivations were. 

“You know that I killed Lex,” Oliver said. “Killed, killed. Not video game killed. Looked in his eyes—“ he swallowed reflexively, took a hit off the bottle, and swallowed again. “He had this breathing apparatus, like a mask, and you couldn’t really see much more than his eyes and his head. He was strapped to a gurney. It was tilted so he was upright.”

Bart turned the game off, getting up. “I don’t know if I want to know this, bro,” he said uneasily. “I mean, I’m not shedding any tears, you know? I saw too much of the messed up stuff he did to people. I just need to know why you did it,” Bart said. “What were you thinking?”

Oliver shook his head. “I’d been hunting him for months. I thought he was too dangerous to live,” he said flatly.

Bart tapped the side of his nose and pointed at Oliver. “That’s it,” he said, in apparent agreement.

Oliver rubbed his eyes. “Bart . . . he was strapped to a gurney. Kept alive by a bunch of equipment. He was contained. He presented no immediate danger to himself or others.”

“That you knew of,” Bart accused. “You’re talking this shit like he was the victim. But, he wasn’t, Ollie. What he did to Victor? What we did to me? What do you think he would have done to Clark, or Dinah, or the Martian dude?”

Oliver cocked his head. He wondered if Bart realized what he said. “It was wrong,” Oliver pointed out.

“Scale of one to ten, with one being . . . Jesus, and ten being—“

“Bart?” Oliver interrupted him. “It was murder.”

“So, that’s it? Nobody else gets a vote? You and Stretch decide everything for everyone? I don’t see you heading off to prison, Ollie. You are jetting off to a sunnier destination, right? That’s what you guys do, isn’t it? Somebody makes a mistake? Fuck me sideways, because you aren’t sticking around to make it right with the rest of us.”

“Is that what you want me to do?” Oliver asked. 

“What?” Bart looked furious. “I want you to fix it. Say that your sorry, and mean it enough to never do that again, and then you work just as hard to fix what you broke.” He had tears in his eyes. “You can’t just lay this shit on me and expect me to be okay with it.”

With that, he sped off. 

Oliver blew out a breath, looking up at the ceiling. “That went well,” he said sarcastically, finishing his lukewarm beer with a grimace. 

He made himself get up and go upstairs to change out of his work clothes, then he called Dinah. 

Bart whooshed back in, panting. He held up Dinah’s cell phone. “She’s working,” he said, and then pointed to the living room. “This is a road trip, and I’m driving the van. So, take a leak, and strap in.”

Oliver wasn’t sure what that meant, but he went downstairs and sat on the couch, feeling faintly ridiculous. Bart rifled through his backpack and pulled out a dog-eared notebook. 

“I brought a list. Didn’t want to leave anything out—since we are clearing the air.”

Pissed off Bart didn’t roll with his usual fake Hispanic shtick. “Crack open another cold one, and get comfy,” he said, practically daring Oliver to refuse.

“Road trip rules?” Oliver asked.

“Yeah. This van isn’t stopping until Daddy says so, and I’m the Daddy.”

Some of it was almost comically petty. Bart had been with him the longest, and he was the youngest. Oliver had convinced himself that he treated Bart like an equal, even when Bart was the most resistant to the idea. Oliver failed to recognize that some of his insecurities were at work. The rest of the team had careers and relationships, and Bart felt left out of that. 

When he finally got to the end, he flung the list down on Oliver’s coffee table. “Go on, tell me that its bullshit,” he challenged.

“Is there anything on the list that I can convince you that we can fix in the next five minutes?” Oliver asked. “Anything,” he stressed.

Bart’s gaze skittered from the list to him and back. “I get one thing? That’s it?”

Oliver shook his head. “Bart, can we stop at the rest station so I can—“

Bart’s expression cleared. “Oh! Oops! I’ve pee’d like three times since we sat down. Sorry, man. I’m putting the van in park,” he mimed. 

When he returned, Bart was in his kitchen building a sandwich. “I was thinking,” he began. “I feel a lot better, and you probably have stuff to do, so—“ he shrugged. 

“Sweep it all away and ignore it some more, since that worked out so well in the past?” Oliver said dryly. “This is important.”

Bart looked skeptical. “Some of it is kind of less important.”

Oliver opened the refrigerator. He didn’t want anything particularly, but it felt like the thing to do. 

“I’m just going to go wide, and if I’m missing something, point it out,” he suggested. “You feel that no one bothers to bring you in until they have a task for you to perform, and only later, you find out that important information was left out?” He reached into the refrigerator for a beer. “You want one of these?” he asked.

“Is that . . .” he nodded when he realized that it wasn’t his beer. “That beer I brought was some _stank_ ,” he observed with artless disgust.

Oliver’s face met his palm, and he started laughing. 

Bart snickered. “Dude! I’m watching you drink it thinking: he’s going to spew.” He used his fleece to open the top and took a long drag on the bottle, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Is this from the microbrewery in Grandville?” he asked, studying the label, and deciding that it was not. “Stucky’s,” he tipped the bottle. “That’s some tasty shit. This is good, too,” he threw in as Oliver tried to control his hilarity. He opened a bottle. 

Bart popped up in front of him to clink bottle necks, leaving a trail of sandwich parts. He whooshed back for the clean-up and hopped up on the counter. 

“I don’t treat you like you are a grown man and a key member of the team with a wealth of experience, skills, and insights,” Oliver began. 

Bart froze, looking almost panicked. 

He laughed uneasily. “When you put it that way, it’s not like I am . . . all that.”

Oliver looked down at the ground. “I didn’t tell you, specifically, what I was doing for two reasons. Lex already knew too much about you, for one. ,” he said. 

Bart was making a study of the floor too. “I got to that on my own.”

“And I knew that it was wrong,” Oliver said. “I might not have been ready to admit it, but I knew. Clark knew that I was hunting Lex, and that I might lose it when I found him, but I don’t think he really believed I would take it that far. You would have.”

“Cause you think I’m a kid?”

“I didn’t tell Victor. Or AC. Or Dinah,” Oliver enumerated. “But, you? Yeah! It was part of the deal I made with myself four years ago to make damned sure that if I involved you in anything illegal or questionable, that it wouldn’t compromise you.”

Bart gave him a searching look. He sighed after a moment. “Fine. I guess that’s okay as long as in our prison flick, you are the cellie who keeps Aryan Nation goons from shiving me in the back.”

Oliver toasted to that. “Got your back man.”

They talked for another half hour. “It’s your list, Bart. How close did I get to hitting it?”

“Pretty close,” he admitted. “I just want to have more than food, and cops and robbers shit, and speed. I used to make fun of Stretch for being so Joe-ordinary, but—“ Bart gestured to the terrace. “He’s out in the world. He’s got a dog, and job, family and friends.”

A crazy idea occurred to Oliver, and he smiled. “We’ll figure it out. Doomsday is in a hole in the ground. This is just living. It’s going to work out.”

He had given up something that he felt called to because he was afraid that he was becoming Lex, but Lex didn’t have people who knew his secrets, and held him accountable for his actions. He cut himself off from that when he abused the trust of the people who believed in him—and Oliver had done that too. He felt a stab of sympathy for Clark. It had to be like a nightmare for him to see someone he considered a friend, heading down the same dark path.

Bart hopped off the counter. “Man!” he whined, “You aren’t going to be happy until I’m all choked up and pretending I got dust in my eyes. I’m bored! Let’s do something to celebrate. Where’s your girlfriend? We should have a party!” Bart said. “She’s got this sweet set-up in Metropolis,” he said. 

That more or less confirmed Oliver’s suspicion that Bart paid him a fly by visit yesterday. “She’s visiting her mother,” he said. 

Bart grinned. “Uh-huh,” he nodded. “So, you aren’t still sore about that guy she wanted to help?”

“No,” Oliver shook his head.

“I think that she was the one that helped us,” Bart confided. “Like, with some kind of freaky Friday dealio.”

“Everyone thinks that,” Oliver told him. “I don’t think Clark is real happy about it, but that’s between them.”

“Gotcha. I don’t get in the middle of that—and you shouldn’t either,” he added. “They always work it out.”

“Good advice.”

Bart looked pleased. “I’m observant,” he said. “And,” he rolled his eyes, “because I like you?” he threw his hands up as if there was no rational explanation for that, but he couldn’t help himself, “Dude, from what I’ve seen, you are in the uncomfortably undefined relationship stage.”

“Am I?”

Bart pointed to his face. “I say ‘girlfriend’, and you,” he pointed at Oliver, and did his impression of Oliver registering the word and its appropriateness. “It was super special. If you get married, I call dibs on best man—but, just to be clear, Chloelicious is a doll. Love her to death, but she’s got us sorted into bins, and she does her best to keep you from escaping.”

Oliver smiled. “Chloe? She does all that?”

Bart studied him. “You hooked up, Ollie. Don’t let it go to your head,” he counseled. “Suit up, dude. Your town is all pretty and sparkly during the day, but at night, the nastier elements slither out, and I’m getting tired of keeping up appearances for you.”

 

If Oliver had to say what he was waiting for, he would not have picked re-connecting with Bart. Before the end of the night, they broke up a gang fight, apprehended a mugger, and scared off some kids who were planning to go base-jumping off the Star City Bridge. Oliver was yawning into a cup of coffee when Chloe arrived at the airport, looking tired, and a little emotional. 

He hugged her. “Did you get any sleep?” he asked. 

“We stayed up late, watching movies, and talking,” she mumbled. “I talked,” she clarified. “Thank you for the picture,” she added. 

He massaged her neck. She was wearing a sundress over a t-shirt—not one of her most fashion forward choices, but probably more appropriate for Metropolis in late fall where it was bound to be cooler. 

“That feels good,” she said softly. 

“We can board anytime,” Oliver told her. 

She twisted her neck a little under his fingers and he grimaced at the cracking sound while she perked up. “That’s better,” she eased back to look up at him. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I was out late,” he smiled. “Hanging out with Bart.”

The pilot emerged from the plane and strolled over to tell Oliver that he expected to be instructed to taxi to the runway in the next fifteen minutes. 

Oliver looked at Chloe, and she nodded. 

When they were settled in the cabin, Oliver gave her the morning edition of the Star City Register, and took care of a few last minute emails. There was a five-inch story on page two of the Metro section about a Green Arrow sighting, crediting him with breaking up the gang fight. They were in the air before she found it, lowering the paper to peer over the top at him. 

“We got bored,” he said. 

She folded the paper. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He studied her face. “Maybe later? Do you want to take a nap?”

When she yawned, and laughed and went to get a blanket and pillow for her. She dozed until they reached Metropolis. There was a little sticky moment after they arrived and deplaned. A limo was waiting for him.

“My car is here,” she said, pointing to the small building that served as a terminal on the general aviation side of the airport. There was a shuttle that carried passengers from here to the main terminal and parking structure. “I’m getting the shuttle.”

“Right,” Oliver nodded. “I’m going to be in the office this afternoon. I’ll call you later?”

She smiled and waved. “Of course. Thanks for the lift home, Ollie,” she said.

He watched her go, frowning a little. His driver was loading his luggage, so he got moving. 

 

Over the next week, he saw more of Tess than he ever wanted to, but she started making an effort to be cordial when he got on with hiring an assistant and catching up with his merger transition work. Part of that was a tour of Luthor Corp own properties in the mid-west, which kept him busy into the early evening hours. He stopped by Watchtower with lunch, but Chloe was out, so he ended up eating with Emil. After lunch, Chloe sent him a text and told him that she wanted to stop in to see him after work. 

He wasn’t sure exactly what that meant until Chloe finally arrived, a half-hour late. He expected to have his work cut out for him, but when she removed her trench coat, she was wearing a little clingy red top that was layered to give a teasing glimpse of her toned stomach, and a pair of poured on jeans that had him at ‘hello, my ass is that fabulous’. 

His gaze roved over her appreciatively, taking in the sexy, tousled hair, hint of smoky eyes, and the succulently sullen purse of her lips, painted a soft glossy red. It was a little weird that it felt like make up sex was definitely on, he decided, since he missed the fight, but he was relieved that they were on the same page.

“Hey, Sullivan,” he said as he walked towards her, already anticipating the thrill of full body contact, and the long, slow, soft, wet, kiss that would follow. 

His first clue that this wasn’t quite what she had in mind was the way she took a step back and slung the giant purse she was wearing around in front of her like a shield. She opened it and yanked out a big, fat libido-killing file. 

“It’s in draft, but this is the procedure manual I’ve been working on,” she explained. 

His eyebrows rose as he took the file, weighing it in his hand. “What the hell? No one has read this,” he challenged. 

She looked indignant. “Sure, they have. John read it. Victor read it. _Bart_ read it—“

Oliver’s head dropped. “You got played if you think Bart read this,” he told her. 

She laughed, appearing to concede the point. “I thought so, too, but Bart reads fast, so maybe he did.”

He surrendered. “Okay,” he sighed. “There’s no Cliff Notes version?”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. 

He ran his tongue over his teeth, eyes narrowing. “Okay,” he took the file from her, and went for her now empty hand, but found himself reaching for air when she reached back into the purse to pull out a box of condoms. “Sometimes we forget, and in the words of my cousin: Condoms are your friend, and friends don’t leave friends behind.”

“I don’t have a problem with that,” he started to say, and then reeled that back in, by adding, “Actually, I kind of do have a problem with that because we really haven’t talked about it, but other than—and I dated Lois, maybe I should be the one to tell her—“ she rolled her eyes at that, so he gestured to her. 

“What?”

“This is a bad idea,” she said.

 _Careful_ , the occasionally helpful voice in his head that told him when to run, duck, or dodge piped up now. 

She turned away to pick her coat up, and he headed her off. “Come on, Chloe. It’s not a terrible idea,” he countered. 

Incredulity registered, and he found himself smiling as he reached for her. She had the most amazingly mobile face. “You can’t even begin to imagine what it does to me when I know that you aren’t wearing underwear that reaches your navel,” he said. “I’m very committed to solving the mystery,” he said as he leaned down to kiss her. 

He kept it soft and slow, not forcing it. When the tip of his tongue flicked her lower lip, she opened up to him with the tiny, helpless sound of her flimsy defenses, falling. Her fingers pulled at his shirtsleeve before slipping around to his back while her other hand rose to his neck. His arm tightened around her, feeling her pressed against him from his chest to mid-thigh, and wanting more. 

When the kiss ended and her dazed eyes opened to meet his, he kissed her again, and this time, she kissed him back. 

He made himself slow down, kissing her throat even as his hand cupped her breast.

“We aren’t dating,” she said. “We don’t go anywhere.”

“Okay,” he said, nipping her earlobe. 

“No strings.” Her other hand slipped under his shirt, against his skin. “No one knows,” she stipulated, heavy lidded eyes meeting his.

She was out of her weight class on casual sex, but it was cute how she was so serious about it. 

“I don’t have any problem with how we spend our time together,” he put in.

She looked a little surprised. “You are going to let me use you for sex?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah! It’s just me, right? We’re exclusive,” he stipulated. 

Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll try to let the FedEx guy down easy,” she retorted. 

He gave her another quick, hard kiss. “If you are hungry, we are going to have to order in,” he warned. 

She tilted her head. “I’ll get dinner on my way home,” she said. “No food, no flowers. Just sex. I’m not staying over. You aren’t driving me home,” she enumerated, and then gave him a smile. “That’s probably a dream date for you, but it’s a booty call for me.”

He smirked. “Keep telling yourself that, Chloe,” he said. “A dream date for you is ‘ _, the world is ending, so let’s fall into bed almost accidentally and struggle for years to make a relationship out of the coincidence of being in the same place on a bad day.”_

The lethal accuracy of that hit made her stiffen in his arms. He ignored it in favor of her ass. “If you are too exhausted to leave my bed, I’ll make you breakfast before I kick you out.”

Her lip curled in a sneer, but her eyes were sparkling with laughter. “Are you are done posturing?”

“I’m just getting warmed up,” he retorted, making her shriek with laughter when he threw her over his shoulder. 

 

Her morning run was all about time, now. It was dark when she started, and cold enough that she could see her breath, and she was never tempted to start at Watchtower. She stretched and jogged to Riverfront Park, and started her run there. 

She didn’t run every day, now. Another runner had started offering her tips. Fifteen miles a day was too much. Three to five miles was better for a daily run with a ten-mile run thrown in every fifth day. There was a cinder path along the river from Riverfront Park to the yacht club and back was five miles. If she was running ten miles, the turnaround point was at the municipal dock where The Islands, a floating casino, was moored. 

The full fifteen-mile run took her to the rusted Portland Avenue Bridge, a narrow, vertical lift bridge built for trains that was still in use. It looked black against the blue-gray of the lightening sky in the morning. The spans were virtually identical, except for the vertical lift drawbridge that lifted for river traffic. At the apex of that span, there was a building that looked like a one-room cottage. When she was a little girl, she would look for it when she was in the car with her parents, watching intently to see if anyone appeared at one of the windows, or opened the door. 

Off to her right, was the river, light skimming off the surface in flashes, as darkness gave way to dawn. On the river there were a few rowers. She was accustomed to seeing them, and to the timing of their oars rising and falling. She thought that it was something she might be interested in—maybe a rowing machine, for the winter months? 

She was going to move out of the The Talon, soon. She was putting off telling Lois. When she came back from Star City, Lois had confronted her about taking off without telling her. It started off almost as a joke, with Lois saying that she should have told her because she might have wanted to go with her. 

Chloe told her that it was not a trip for fun. She needed to see her mom, and Lois reminded her that her mom was Lois’ favorite aunt—also a joke, but it grated, and Chloe told her that her mother was not available to be claimed. 

The way it came out, was unfortunate. 

“Lois, you are welcome to my old career, my old desk, my old best friend, and my old apartment. I’m going to keep my mom, if that’s okay.”

She ducked her head, in the present, wincing at how it came out. She would have given anything to take it back. For a week, Lois was like a kicked puppy, sending her emails about openings at The Daily Planet, and calling her to ask if she was coming home. The campaign advanced to include requests to meet her for breakfast, which got in the way of her run. 

Clark had called that correctly. Lois didn’t believe that she was running, and then when Clark backed her up, she was mad at both of them, and worried about Chloe. Which meant that Clark was mad at her again, and riding her about keeping up appearances for Lois’ sake. They got together for lunch yesterday, and Lois spent the entire time chattering about Oliver’s ‘antics’. 

During the zombie plague crisis, Oliver had run into a young woman who had replaced the contents of her purse with a brick to improvise a flail. It took a couple of weeks, but he tracked her down at an underground fight club. Oliver, and to a lesser extent, Bart, had taken her under their wing. Lois had less than the full story, and was convinced that an intervention was in order. 

She wasn’t mad at her cousin. She was mad at Clark. Keeping Lois in the dark meant that Lois was constantly blundering into things that she didn’t have enough information to understand. So, there was her cousin, playing sidekick to The Blur, and crisis counselor to Oliver, nearly getting herself killed when she stumbled into their world, and then becoming more attached to the idea that The Blur was there for her. Clark refused to hear anything Chloe had to say on the subject, and he had this way of looking at her as if he was trying to figure out what her problem was for objecting to how he was managing things with Lois, and coming up with conclusions that made her want to punch him.

She nearly lost her footing on the turnabout, skidding on the cinder path. She had to put her hand out to catch her balance and just when that happened, someone standing on the edge of the path, stepped back. She tried to dodge, but connected hard enough to twist her ankle. 

“Sorry,” she panted, rotating her ankle. Weight on it made her clench her teeth. 

“It was my fault,” he said. “You’re hurt?”

She was getting a hinkey feeling. “It’s fine,” she said, looking down the path in the direction she had come from. She had passed a couple of people on her way up to the bridge, but after the casino barge, so there were other runners on the same path. 

“Maybe you should sit,” he said.

She gave him a closer look. He was wearing a knit cap, a sweater layered over a t-shirt, and dark jeans. It was hard to place his age, but older. Forties, maybe early fifties. Strong features, prominent nose, too rugged to be considered handsome, it was an interesting face, but not a memorable one. She slipped her hand into her pocket for her phone. “I’m going to walk it off, but thanks,” she said firmly. She had her earbuds in, and she pulled her phone out to dial Clark. 

And, she rolled to voice mail. Chloe gritted her teeth, limping, and ran schedules through her head. Emil was working twelve-hour rotations, and he had been off yesterday, so he was back on today. John was on third shift, and was probably at the end of his shift now. She tried him.

He answered on the second ring. “I’m on the river footpath by the Portland Avenue Bridge, and I think I sprained my ankle,” she said. 

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” John said. 

She hobbled toward the incline, and decided that she was not quite up to the challenge on her own.

About a mile down the path, another runner was jogging toward her. She recognized him as a regular and felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease as he kept coming at a steady pace. The person she labeled as creepy moved into the weeds on the riverside of the path, re-emerging a few minutes later with a pail and a fishing pole. People did fish along downriver from the casino barge, so that was not odd. 

John arrived, and helped her up the incline. Fifteen minutes later, she was in the Emergency Room treatment bay at Met Gen while John went looking for a cup of coffee for her. An intern came over to examine her ankle and write up an order for an x-ray. Emil appeared at the nursing station with his stethoscope slung around his neck. He did a little double take when he saw her, and came over. 

“Running injury?” he asked. 

Assuming the comment was directed to her, the intern responded, “Ms. Sullivan, this is one of our attending physicians, Dr. Hamilton. She twisted her ankle running, and I’m ordering an x-ray.”

Emil reached out and squeezed her arm. “I’m going to go ahead and remove your shoe and sock,” he said. “Scoot up for me, Chloe. I want your left leg fully supported by the exam table.”

John arrived with her coffee. “It looks like you are in good hands,” he said. 

“Thanks,” Chloe took a sip. “I’ll get Clark or Lois to pick me up,” she offered, wincing as Emil eased her foot out of her shoe. “Sweaty feet. Sorry, Emil.”

The intern was hanging out. “Rubbing alcohol and some two by fours, please,” Emil requested, using his stethoscope to check her radial pulse.

The coolness of the alcohol was soothing. “I don’t think that there is a fracture, but let’s run the x-ray,” he pressed under her toes and she drew in a breath at the pain. “Torn ligament?” he mused. “I think you are going to be in a fiberglass boot for a week or two,” he told Chloe. 

“I want to see the x-ray,” he told the intern, “and I’ll review your discharge orders,” he added. 

Two hours later, Clark arrived to drive her to Watchtower. “I figured that you probably didn’t want Lois to take you to The Talon,” he explained, watching Chloe maneuver with the clunky fiberglass boot and one crutch. 

“You figured right,” Chloe grumbled. “I was just thinking this morning: I need to move out of The Talon.”

“I don’t know,” Clark said. “Lois already thinks that you are mad at her, and you can’t live somewhere she can’t visit,” he pointed out.

“So I should kill three hours commuting?” 

He gave her a pointed look. “I do. Lois does. Good thing it is your left foot since you don’t need that to drive.”

 

“If I hadn’t needed his help to get in the truck, I might have done some serious damage to my crutch whacking him over the head,” she told Oliver later when he called. 

He was in Star City, finishing a three-day stint at his West Coast office. “Why don’t you use my place tonight? It’s more comfortable, and you can soak your ankle in the tub,” he pointed out. 

It was a good idea. “Okay,” she said. “I may take you up on that.”

“I’ll call Jean, and let her know.” Jean was Oliver’s housekeeper, and Oliver had charmed his way back into her heart when he rescued Mia, who was now living with Jean and her husband. When he was in town, she prepared meals for him to warm up. 

“Ask for the spinach salad with the strawberries and pecans. And the vinaigrette,” Chloe urged.

“What were you saying just last week? Something about being grossed out by my disturbing seduction of my housekeeper—“

“I’m hungry, and my ankle hurts,” she whined. “Use your voodoo for a good cause.”

He chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised. “Don’t work too late.”

She sighed. He had already hung up. She was running support for Dinah on the West coast, and she had an early evening with AC, then Bart was up in Keystone. If Oliver decided to patrol in Star City, she was going to be stretched thinner. 

By the time she was ready to wrap up for the evening, her ankle was throbbing, and she was tempted to sleep on the couch. Instead, she hobbled down to the elevator and out to the street. Her car was parked twenty feet away. 

She was maneuvering her crutch into the backseat when a familiar sound of an arrow passing through the air made her look up. The hooded archer was in silhouette, but she knew at a glance that it was not her favorite hooded archer. It felt like an ambush. The fiberglass cast was like an anvil. She dropped to the ground so fast, that it felt a little unplanned. If she scooted backward, the back of the car would give her cover. 

The arc of a pair of headlights behind her illuminated the pavement as big, old-fashioned black car came roaring down the middle of the street. The passenger door opened, and her eyes widened at the sight before her.

“Ms. Sullivan, we’re here to help,” he said. 

“Yeah,” her voice sounded funny to her ears. “You don’t see a lot of unhelpful people in our line of work,” she agreed. “I’m going to sit down.”

“Ma’am? You are down,” he said.

If she was down, that meant that there really was a great big arrow sticking out of her shoulder. Passing out now would be awesome, she thought. 

 

When Chloe woke up again, she knew that she was in the hospital. Her blacking out was interrupted by people poking and prodding the stick jammed in her shoulder and asking her stupid questions until she slipped back into unconsciousness. She woke up again because she was being unceremoniously cut out of her clothing, and she knew her blood type, damn it! 

She remembered that Emil had been there, washing her stinky feet when she needed him to do something about the arrow sticking out of her, but that didn’t make any sense, so she put it down to the drugs, and cracked an eyelid open enough to confirm that she was no longer a shish kabob. 

A man in scrubs came over. “You are in recovery,” he said, tucking in the blanket covering her, and guiding a bent straw to her lips.

It made her think of her Dad, and her eyes filled up. 

She was awake when she was transferred to the hospital room. Emil was there. “You are going to be fine,” he said. “I’m here. Clark is bringing your cousin from Smallville. Try to get some rest,” he said, staying with her until she fell asleep again.

She woke up again, feeling a burst of irritation that no one would just let her sleep. Lois and Clark were at the foot of her hospital bed having a whispered argument about whether or not they should cover her foot. Drugs, again, she thought. 

“She sleeps like that normally,” Lois hissed. “One foot out. Leave it alone, Clark.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No! I’m just mad in general. Why would someone want to use Chloe for target practice? This has something to do with Oliver.”

Chloe blinked. That actually made sense. “I’m sleeping. Go outside and argue,” she said crossly. 

“Chloe!” Lois rushed over to her to hug her. 

“I’m okay,” she comforted her cousin.

Stranded at the foot of the bed, Clark fixed the hospital issued slipper sock on her foot and pulled the sheet and blanket back over her foot. He looked worried. 

“I’m going to take the rest of the week off to take care of you,” Lois promised tearfully.

Chloe patted her back with her good hand. “Let’s not go crazy,” she said. “Could I have some water?” 

“Clark?” Lois delegated that.

“Not Clark,” Chloe looked up at Lois. “Water, with ice chips the way you make it, Lo.”

Lois finger combed her hair. “Do you want juice or Ginger Ale?”

“Ginger ale,” Chloe said hopefully. 

“Clark didn’t stop to get flowers,” Lois told her. 

Chloe snorted. “No sense of occasion, huh?” she joked. 

“I’ll be right back,” Lois promised. 

Clark stayed at the foot of the bed. “What happened?” 

She told him, quickly and concisely since she expected Lois back at any moment. Clark asked her to walk him through it slower. He understood her concern about Lois overhearing them, but he was listening for her return. 

Lois detoured from her appointed errand when she saw Oliver at the nursing station. 

She greeted him with and accusatory, “You!”

“I got a call from a friend in—“ he shook his head. “That’s not important. Where is Chloe?”

“This has something to do with your little hobby,” she hissed.

While Lois was interrogating Oliver, Emil entered the hallway from the opposite direction, and paused at Chloe’s door until he was sure that Oliver saw him. He came in carrying a large file sleeve with the view from Chloe’s admission x-ray. 

He gave Clark a head-jerking nod. “Hey, Clark. You should probably break up the little confab in the hallway. Try to keep Ms. Lane busy?”

Chloe pointed at Clark. “Popsicles. With real fruit. Tropical fruit,” she added. “Oh, and a breakfast burrito from that guy with the food truck on Broadway.”

Emil reached for his wallet. “Make that two,” he said. 

Chloe held up four fingers, mouthing, “Starving.”

With an explosive sigh, Clark agreed to get Lois out of the way. Chloe found the controls for the bed and got into a more comfortable position while Emil pulled out the big sheets of x-ray film and placed them in the clips on the light box on the wall. 

Oliver stuck his head in a moment later. “I got here as soon as I could,” he said, coming over to the bed. “I stopped in a while ago, but you were still out,” he gave her a searching look. 

Clark came in with a white paper sack, giving Oliver and Chloe a surprised look. Oliver was tenderly cupping her cheek, their foreheads nearly touching. He looked at Emil, who also seemed to be processing this as a startling new development. When Clark reached Oliver to find out if he knew anything that would shed light on why someone was using Chloe for target practice, Oliver was still in Star City, but planning to be in town later that day. 

Around five in the morning, he showed up at the hospital, and Clark assumed that he had moved up his flight plans. After conferring with Emil over the missile pulled out of Chloe, he left, saying that he wanted to walk the scene with John and check out their base to make sure that it was secure. 

“Are you in pain?” Oliver asked. 

She nodded. “Emil says I’ll be fine.”

Clark cleared his throat. “Breakfast burritos as ordered, and maybe we should get to the bottom of this? Emil? What can you tell us.”

“I’m starving,” Chloe admitted to Oliver.

He kissed her. “It’s the blood loss,” he explained, separating from her to pull the tray table over to her and away from Emil, who was reaching for the bag. 

Chloe chuckled. “He can have one,” she said, frowning as she looked down at her left arm. It was in a sling. 

“I’m going to help you,” Oliver said, unwrapping the foil around one burrito. 

Emil shrugged, and gave up on his presentation.

“I sent Lois to the Hillview Whole Foods,” Clark protested. “The way she drives, we really don’t have time for snacks.”

“Yeah,” Oliver dismissed his protest. “I’m on it. I know who it is. It’s somebody messing with me.”

Chloe had her mouth full, and she mimed confusion.

Oliver looked embarrassed and apologetic. “When I was getting started, I did some stupid stuff, got involved with some bad people. This is their way of getting my attention, and now that it is fully engaged, I’ll take care of it,” he promised.

“Water?” 

Emil filled a cup for her and set it on the tray table. 

“Do you need me?” Chloe asked after she took a sip. “I can Watchtower from a laptop.”

“I know you can,” Oliver said. “But, I did read the manual, and Vic is giving me a hand with the sleuthing parts of the manhunt, so I think we are good. I have some leads. Bart is keeping om eye on Mia. Clark,” he paused to look at Clark over his shoulder, “keep an eye on Lois, yeah?”

Clark nodded.

“We’re good,” Oliver said, peeling back more of the foil to take a bite of Chloe’s burrito. 

“Hey!” she protested. 

“Okay,” Clark said slowly, watching Oliver dodge Chloe’s fingers when she tried to retaliate by pinching him. “When did you two start dating?”

Chloe was taking a bite out of the burrito that Oliver held for her. “I got this,” he told her. “It’s not dating if you don’t go anywhere,” he said while Chloe nodded. 

He sat on the bed next to her, “You know what would be good with this?” he asked rhetorically. “A mango and lime smoothie.”

“Clark?” Chloe looked to him. “Please?”

“Demoted to water boy,” Clark grumbled. “Fine,” he whooshed out.

Oliver riffled through the bag to pull out another burrito. “When you get discharged from the hospital, you want to stay with me?” Oliver asked.

“Sounds like a plan,” Chloe agreed. “Tell me about this guy. Who is he? What’s his M.O.?” 

Emil smiled to himself. “I’m going to head home. Call me if you need anything. I’ll work on your discharge order when I get back,” he told Chloe. 

 

This was how Chloe and Oliver ended up together, without making any decisions about how very much together they were meant to be. Oliver dealt with his past, with some help from the team. 

Jimmy wasn’t going to be in rehab forever. They had a history of breaking up only to get back together again that Chloe knew she needed to deal with. The answer was not to duck behind Oliver as if he was the most plausible of double rebound boyfriends. 

Davis Bloom’s sad and lonely life came to an end when he managed to hang himself in his cell at Belle Reve. Chloe was in California visiting her mother. He had left a handwritten will, leaving all his earthly possessions to Chloe. There wasn’t much. She did not want him to become fetishized like other celebrated serial killers. She talked it over with Clark, and they decided that cremation for Davis and incineration for his belongings was the best way to proceed. His ashes were interred in an unmarked grave on a hillside overlooking the river before Chloe returned from her visit. She waited a few days before she went there to lay flowers on his grave. 

Then she went back to work. She had the mystery of her rescuer the night she was shot to solve. Clark had his growing colony of Kandorians to resettle. Lois thought she was living with Oliver, after she moved out of The Talon, but she was mostly living at Watchtower. Keeping their personal and professional relationships from overlapping was impossibly complicated. 

She wondered if Oliver was right when he said that a dream date for her was, “the world is ending, so let’s fall into bed almost accidentally and struggle for years to make a relationship out of the coincidence of being in the same place on a bad day.”

If he was right, it did not bode well for them. 

 

“Am I the only one who is experiencing unwanted second hand embarrassment?” Chloe asked.

Oliver tilted his head. “Is it me? Is my face doing something weird?”

Resting his elbow on the bar, he bit his lip, taking in her appearance with interest. 

It was Lois’ birthday, and Lois demanded a night on the town. Oliver offered to spring for Vegas, but Lois—spontaneous, fun loving, adventure-girl—Lane was now Clark Kent’s Lois ‘we are just simple folk’ Lane. She demurred, and the next best thing was the casino barge on the river. Chloe had to come with, and because Lois was confused about their relationship.

At least, that was how it seemed to him.

Lois was wandering around with her arm through Clark’s in a pale blue tweed dress, a brunette Barbie lugging around her brown haired Ken doll, in a complimentary navy suit. They made self-consciously cute small talk with their heads together. Just watching them was giving Oliver sugar shock.

“Now that you mention it, your face does look weird,” Chloe remarked. “Knock it off. You are almost as bad as Clark when it comes to talking yourself back into the relationship you talked yourself out of, after it’s over.”

“I’m pretty sure that I’m not doing that,” he said, waiving the bartender over. “Why are we even here?” 

Chloe turned away from the floorshow. Her cousin had gone from take-no-prisoners to take-it-slow. It was either commitment to Clark, or indecision about Clark versus Lois’s epic crush on The Blur. 

“What do you mean?”

She turned around to ask the bartender to recommend something tart while Oliver was served a premium scotch. A few minutes later, the bartender whipped up a cranberry and vodka concoction garnished with thinly sliced green apples speared on a skewer. 

“Red to match your dress,” Oliver murmured, looking down at her. She was wearing his favorite red dress. Her hair was styled in soft curls.

Their eyes met, and he read something of the distance that they had traveled. 

“Chloe? Are you sure that you don’t want something that looks a little more like that?” he asked.

She turned her head to regard her cousin and her oldest friend. Fondness glowed from her smile. 

“What’s behind the other curtain?”

He nodded, smiling. “Funny you should ask,” he said. “I was thinking a little small arms training?” he leaned closer. “From my terrace, in the right wind, the globe of the Daily Planet makes a great target.”

He laid a five hundred dollar chip on the bar. “I bet we can figure out more interesting stakes?”

“You’re on,” Chloe murmured, laughing when Oliver pulled her off the barstool. 

It was all cops and robbers, fun and games, until you discovered that you did not have all the answers, the consequences of your decisions were life altering, and the metaphorical blood on your hands was hard to scour away with the grit of your best intentions. 

But, not impossible, and they slipped unnoticed, into the night wrapped in that distinction.


End file.
